WAITING ON U.S.A.?

Wairarapa Age, 26 August 1933, Page 7

WAITING ON U.S.A.?

PROBLEMS OF: RECOVERY DISCUSSED AT BANFF. POSSIBILITIES OF CURRENCY STABILISATION. BANFF, August 24. A picture of the world marking time until the United States recovery scheme .'had been further advanced was painted on Thursday by members of the Institute of Pacific Relations. A discussion on trade agreements and the possibility of bilateral treaties in Pacific countries was swung by Chinese members into a fulLdress discussion of currency problems. The Chinese members said that tariffs were in the present state of the world only one aspect of a larger problem in which exchange stabilisation stood pre-eminent. The prospects of tariff agreements, therefore, and of a wide international trade based upon greater freedom of goods depended upon a prior agreement on ■currency matters.

The British members took an almost optimistic view of the (possibility of progress. While it seemed to them highly improbable that a further depreciation of the United States dollar would come, there was a strong suggestion of a view that it would be possible for the leading trading countries of the world to get together on a currency stabilisation programme some time next year. Once that was achieved it was thought that an embarkation upon a scheme of international priceraising would be possible by means of the expansion of Central Bank assets in various countries. This expansion might then, be followed by largescale programmes of public works and the restoration of employment to something like normal proportions. Some suggestion was made that sterling might be the .currency upon which other exchanges would peg theirs but it was pointed out that this was relatively unimportant. So long as the agreement included Britain, France, the United States, and Japan, sufficient impetus would be given to the scheme to bring others into it. Once this framework <of recovery had been made, the resultant stability and confidence would dear the way for a resumption of international lending and borrowing, with a further possibility that trade agreements might bo reached which would lower tariffs and clear out the blocked. channels of international commerce.