BANKING IN AMERICA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 5, 22 August 1911, Page 2

BANKING IN AMERICA.

Banking circles in America' are evincing increasing interest it. is stated in the proposals by Senator Aidrich to establish a central bank for the United States. It is clearly, recognised that some such drastic change in the monetary system of the conn-, try is imperative, if the exceptional period of crop moving is to be avoided, A strong endorsement of Senator Aldrich’s plan for monetary reform was recently given by Mr McVeagh, the Secretary of the Treasury, in an address delivered before the bankers’ association of Missouri and- Kansas. The lecturer pointed out that the existing banking system of the United States was a disorganised mass, composed of 25,000 units, and that a central reserve association would bring them all into a workable organisation. One of the tilings necessary to a proper banking .system was a circulation al-« ways adequate and never superfluous, and another great desideratum was a reserve. The existing reserves had been established by law with great exactitude, but. they were simply fixed accounts of money in banks, held in useless isolation, so that when accommodation were not. available. What Senator Aldrich’s scheme aims to do is to change' the control of the volume of currency from thousands of separate and scattered hanks to a central agency, which would represent the financial institutions as a whole, and at the same, time would protect the interests of the public. Tin’s is infinitely preferable to dependence on the decision of over 7000 boards of directors, who do not pretend to consider anything but the immediate profit of their own baiik. According to “Broadstrcets” the question of currency reform in the United States is fast approaching the region of practical politics.