CRAZE FOR BANKING REFORM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9142, 18 July 1908, Page 4

CRAZE FOR BANKING REFORM.

One of the most singular present-day spectacles in the financial world is the seeming craze for banking reform, says the "Scotsman." To judge from w,hat is now goin< on in this sense in several leading countries, anyone unacquainted with the circumstances might very well fancy that the laws governing banking and currency affairs had yet to be discovered, and (hat bankers had up to now conducted their business ori the most crude and empirical principles. With us the problem is not, as with others, si much concerned with the provision of adequate facilities for domestic needs as to make provision to cope with emergencies oC an international character, tiie building up, that is to say, of a gold reserve that would enable us to meet a sudden and large foreign demand without p. too great disturbance of the mo:v y market. Nobody has yet been aide to suggest a practicable method for doing this in a manner wnich would meet all the conditions of the problem. Bankers are themselves at variance to a degree, indicating that a reconciliation of conflicting views is well-nigh, if nor. wnolly, irnpon sible. It has been suggested thac in the absence of agi'eement legislative compulsion should be brought to bear, and it is satisfactory to ga lur from a statement made tha other day by Mr Haldane at th * annual dinner of the Association of English Country Bankers, and the Central Association of Bankers, that the Government were not likely to introduce any measure to interfere with the Bank of England, or with the management by bankers of their own business'—a declaration which was received with cheers by the assembled guests.