Mr Walker’s Idea.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 366, 7 March 1932, Page 6

Mr Walker’s Idea.

A Central Bank

“Only Way of Saving the

Country

ZEALAND must form a Central Bank right away, with or without competent men at its head, declared Mr L. C. Walker in the course of an address on Saturday night to the

For New Zealand Society, an organisation instituted for frank discussion of economic problems. “ We did not get into the gutter ourselves. With all due respect to the Mother Country she dropped us there. A disastrous collapse. It will be a tragic error if we continue to assume that the Mother Country will continue re-

ceiving our goods at the prices of the last twenty years. We must alter our whole scheme of things. “It will take a Central Bank in the next few years to save the banks as they are at the present time. We have to get the best machinery to build the structure of New Zealand in the best possible way. We must also insist that it is a State Bank. It has got to *be more than that. It will have to be to money what the Supreme Court is to justice.” Model from Germany. The best model, he said, was to be found in Germany in the Investment Banks which were formed by the German banks with staffs of the finest technically skilled men, chemists, metallurgists and the like, together with farming specialists. When money was lent it -was provided in perpetuity and the banks provided the supervision of their own technical men. It was not necessary, however, to follow slavishly that method, but the Central Bank must have men technically equipped for various enterprises. It might seem strange for him to say that two and two in business did not always make four. “You have got to know what you are adding,” he said, and gave the quaint instance that two rabbits added to two rabbits did not make four rabbits but hundreds of rabbits. That was the trouble with the economists. They dealt in figures and often did not know what they were adding. The man for the job was one who knew something of every department of life and brought to his task a wide knowledge of life. Every fact had to be checked. That technical skill was available in New Zealand for the Central Bank. “ I don’t believe in taking the slump lying down or even levelling it up,” he said. “ That is a very weak-kneed policy. I think we should take the people who know and fight it for all it is worth.”