MONEY SYSTEM OF THE FUTURE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21971, 24 May 1941, Page 5

MONEY SYSTEM OF THE FUTURE

ACCOUNTANCY VIEWPOINT "The monetary problem is not new; it is as wa as organised trade,' states a New Zealand accountant m a review of the outlook. "What is new is that the practical factors of consumption and oi production have been so mastered that their rational co-ordination is becoming more and more a physical possibility, and that tne facilities at the service of the recoraers of the facts of commerce allow the records to be kept which the changed conditions demand. If new accountancy conceptions are needed to destroy the money illusion, we must get down to the task and do it. First we shall have to be sure and interpret our facts as correctly as possloie, then we shall have to be insistent in the telling of them to the banker and the business man so that they will be acted upon. The time is opportune as the structure of the monetary systems throughout the world are at present being refashioned, in New Zealand no less than elsewhere. “Accountancy must contribute its part in fashioning the whole structure, which will slowly evolve from traditional practice and not be made by legislative methods. lam satisfied that eventually, notwithstanding even the interference of the politician, it will be based on true accountancy conceptions. The business controller, employing statistical methods, is even now making his influence felt. He recognises present-day conditions with his planning and his control. He is seeking for stabilised sales, which depend on a more rational flow of consumers’ income and of investment; and unconsciously, but none the less definitely by his efforts in controlling production and the financial structure of his business, he is contributing to that end. “Also his efforts are giving the bankers new conceptions with which to control the volume of credit. Short term credit, for example, should oe proportionate to trade, not to security, though security no doubt will always be necessary; or, to take an even broader view, the basis of all credit should be qualitative not quantitative, as has been the case up to the present. This changed basis for credit must come if we are to get that balanced production which essentially must be the basis of a stabilised currency. The proportions which the factors in a balanced production will bear to each other will constantly alter, but efficient statistics should just as constantly record the changes almost as soon as their effects begin to be felt.”