The Stratford Evening Post With which is Incorporated "THE EGMONT SETTLER" (Established 1890.) TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1933 The World Economic Conference

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 222, 18 April 1933, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post With which is Incorporated "THE EGMONT SETTLER" (Established 1890.) TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1 933 The World Economic Conference

THE present condition of world affairs is that each country is strangling the trade of the others. This process is indulged in because each country thinks that by so doing it is protecting itself. The sum total of the whole business is that the trade of the world is suffering from mutual strangulation. This is the main cause of the depression continuing. There are, of course, other matters which need attention. Inter-Governmental and International debts have become an intolerable burden because of the alteration of the price level of goods. When the price level is relatively high it takes fewer quantities of good? to provide the credit to pay foreign idebtedness than when prices are abnormally low. The result is that the present level of world prices has added very heavy burdens to the shoulders of the debtor nations. Equity demands that these debt burdens should in some way be adjusted. The war debt payments, chiefly from Europe to America, are an added burden to the ordinary indebtedness of the nations, and accentuate the position as it presents itself to-day. Coupled with the war debts problem is that of the reparations problem. The European countries which are due to receive reparation payments from Germany depnd upon these to enable them to meet their v/ar debt obligations. Despite the fact that America insists, when negotiating upon the war debt issue, in keeping clear and separate the two problems, nevertheless they are actually combined, and this makes it imperative that they shall be treated as one problem at the forthcoming Economic Conference. These major dislocations have their repercussions in many areas, in the banking and the monetary situations for instance. It is being said that the currency system, which has hitherto proved adequate to the needs of the world, has broken down. TV; appearances are in that direction. Actually, however, the Cu'T"ncy system has behaved in no abnormal way at all; it has been subjected to abnormal treatment. Trade having been interfered with by tariff, by quota, by actual prohibition, and by voluntary and involuntary rigging of the exchanges, the currency system has been subjected to many violent '-hocks. No currency system that the wit of man can devise could withstand such attacks, nor could any lnternataional currency system maintain a stable price level fur good:;, ail goods, that is, in this present uncertain world. Further, no currency system, nor banking arrangements, could radically alter nor offset the defects in the International trading system as at present constituted. But I hi: problems which have been created in the realm of currency and banking, as a reflex ol the present situation, will nevertheless have to be studied, otherwise these currency problems may prove to be barriers in the way of recovery. It is well, therefore, that President Roosevelt has decided that there shall be no barriers to the held:; of investigation and enquiry al the forthcoming Economic Conference. The ennuiry, to be of mr>, mmf necessarily be of the widest, and the decisions will have to be the boldest. ~ _.. .