EMPIRE CURRENCIES

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3178, 14 May 1932, Page 3

EMPIRE CURRENCIES

While the great subject of discussion at the Empire Economic Conference at Ottawa will be Empire, trade, tariffs, and common tariff concessions, it has been indicated th,at the delegates may also look forward to participation in deliberations on the currency problem. Some weeks ago the question of the establishment of a common Empire currency was raised in the House of Commons at Ottawa. Finally the House adopted a resolution, proposed by the Minister of Trade and Customs, to the effect that the Canadian representatives at the Economic Conference should initiate and support measures for the stabilisation oh the currencies of all the British countries in such a manner as would facilitate trade between them and promote the economic unity of the Empire. Our readers have no occasion for being reminded of the extent to which curency questions are providing material for discussion and controversy at the present time. Most probably the effect on the average person to-day of the conflicting arguments and theories that are put forward is to tend to produce a state of general mental obfuscation concerning the subject, which is relieved by a return to topics of a less esoteric nature. Mr Stevens, the Canadian Minister of Trade and Customs, who urged that it was imperative that the currency problem should be tackled, expressed the view that the available supply of gold was insufficient for the expanding needs of industry and trade, and suggested that an Empire bimetallic currency would be advantageous. He rejected the idea of a purely paper currency. Nobody, he said had given a satisfactory explanation of how a “ managed ” currency could be worked. The representatives of the dominions hav|e yet a period of grace, somewhat brief it is true, in which to attempt to familiarise themselves with different aspects of a thorny question, in preparation for the discussion of it at Ottawa. They will probably look to the British Government to suggest some solution of the problem, some means of retrieving the chaotic position into which the exchanges have fallen. But whether the British Government has yet any clear ideas itself on the subject seems to be questionable. References to the matter on the part of members of the Cabinet have been described as cautious and nebulous. While insisting from time to time on the necessity of “ stabilising the pound," they invariably fail to indicate, it has been pointed out, whether the stability which they desire is in terms of gold and gold curi’encies or in terms of commodities. “ Yet so long," observes the Times, “as the influences remain at work which have depressed prices to the existing disastrous levels the one stability excludes the other. There is the same studied ambiguity in the Canadian resolution. An international standard which could be so worked as to keep commodity prices at a rea- t sonable level, and national currencies based on that standard, are so necessary for a revival of trade throughout the world that Governments are reluctant to abandon the hope of a speedy restoration of conditions under which both prices and exchanges could be established at the same time." A solution of the world problem, through an international conference on the monetary position, such as Mr Winston Churchill recently urged should be immediately held, would no doubt contribute to a solution of the Empire problem. Otherwise,, the Times agrees, the Empire currency question will be among the most urgent of those which the Empire Governments will have to discuss at Ottawa. The complexity of the problem points, of course, to the desirability of careful study of it before hand if the discussions at the Conference are to be of real practical value.