THE RESERVE BANK BILL.

Waipa Post, Volume 47, Issue 3385, 26 October 1933, Page 5

THE RESERVE BANK BILL.

Sii',—Being a South African, I once found this sporadic denunciation of the proposed reserve bank to be only senseless. I now find it dangerous. In South Africa a reserve bank (founded on the solicited advice of New Zealand's alleged newest enemy, the Bank of England) has, for thirteen years, been functioning satisfactorily as a reserve bank—not, mark you, as an insurance office to indemnify private banks from crashing, or as an engine to prevent nations from dropping off the gold standard, or as an octopus, or as anything else, but simply as a reserve bank belonging to the people and entirely free from dictation from political parties—in fact, just such a bank as has been proposed by the Bank of England for New Zealand. And, wonderful to relate, South Africa still lives !

In the light of my knowledge of the great benefit that the reserve bank has been to South Africa, I stand amazed —and, I confess, amused—at the present campaign of misrepresentation and ignorance about the proposed reserve bank for New Zealand. Had I the means I would not hesitate to hire halls in the chief centres- of the Dominion to reveal to the trusting people of this country the extent of the (misrepresentation that has been, and is being, foisted on them by certain persons whose knowledge of the subject of a reserve bank seems to be a minus quantity, and by others who have axes to grind; and I dare to say that not as much as 5 per cent of them have ever had any experience at all of a reserve bank, but they are making a tremendous lot of noise.

The whole financial world is rushing to reserve banks. Are our denouncers sane and the rest of the world mad ? Are chambers of commerce to be commended upon publicly approving the establishment of a reserve bank in New Zealand ?'—l am, etc., J. McCORMACK. Kawakawa.