GOLD SET FREE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 21014, 18 April 1938, Page 7

GOLD SET FREE

Dramatic Stroke of President CREDIT EXPANSION SCHEME MEETING BUSINESS RECESSION AMERICAN PUMP-PRIMING CAMPAIGN United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright WASHINGTON, April 15. At President Roosevelt’s request, the Secretary of the United States Treasury (Mr H. Morganthau, junr.), has ordered the desterilisation of 1,392,000,000 dollars worth of gold and has by telegraph distributed that sum among twelve Federal Reserve Banks for private loans. It is pointed out that this action involves the use of the present amount of inactive gold. Thus the sterilisation of all gold imported quarterly in excess of 100,000,000 dollars will continue. The Federal Reserve Board has agreed to liberalise its requirements freeing 750,000,000 dollars from reserves. “We in America,” declared President Roosevelt in a nation-wide broadcast last week, “know our democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work, but we must act together to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task. Your Government must prove it is stronger than the forces of business depression." President Roosevelt continued: “We are a rich nation and can afford to pay for security and prosperity without having to sacrifice our liberties into the bargain. It is going to cost something to get out of this recession this way, but the profit we will get out of it will pay. “I constantly seek to look beyond the doors of the White House, beyond officialdom, into the hopes and fears of men and women in their homes. I want to be sure that neither the battles nor the burdens of office will blind me to an intimate knowledge of the way the American people want to live and the purposes for which they have put me here.” As his first step President Roosevelt proposed to Congress a 4.512,000,000,000-dollars lending, spending and credit expansion programme. This is the New Deal's second huge “pump-priming” cai paign against depression. The plan falls into three general categories:— (1) The maintenance of relief; (2) The expansion of credit; (3) The revival of public works, and additional funds for certain active New Deal recovery agencies.