PUBLIC MOURNERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 200, 27 August 1935, Page 6

PUBLIC MOURNERS

Bir, —The raising of the bank rate to 3J per cent, by the bank s in Denmark on account of a demonstration by 40.000 farmers to interfere with the foreign currency, should sound a grave warning to our New Zealand farmers not to use political interference with the economic laws of the banking system. One of your correspondents wishes to concede to the extremists that the banks arc ‘a painful malady.” They alway s were. (Surely we are not living in a pagan country.’ Otherwise there would be an excuse for a lack of knowledge. Of course it is an intellectual difficulty to understand why the monetary system should be chaotic and always was. It is a necessary pheno inenon. Profit is tin* motive of our actions. Since profits are the surplus over all costs then it is necessary for the system to adjust itself at periodic intervals. Our farmer friend wishes to sell his “cast ewes” which at the beginning of his operations were once young sheep, and are non by products. But another farmer uses these by products as his raw materials. Ho concedes his own right, to sell to the best advan tage. In your issue appear- the following in refcring to the demand for gold—“ Bars of gold . . . were disposed of at £7 0s .Id per fine ounce.” Surely we must concede the same right to the banker as ive want for ourselves; but no, farmers want to usurp the policy of the banking system. To depreciate the pound by raising tho exchange rate is inflation and the funding of Treasury Bills i> deflation. See circular of the Bank of New Sout h \\ a les so t hat the first farmer advises the raising of the rate which comes on to tho distributive or business section who pass on the extra in the charges of forwarding exports of the second farmer. The same thing existed thousands of years ago. Those theorists were known in Pharoah’s time a- croakers or public mourners. A machine has no life or motive. ,\ typewriter, for instance. A system then is dead. It always was. So that when science brings along a system to cure these afflictions of mankind’s economic ills thc\ are Job’s comforters. Literally they arc ever ready to “raise up theii mourning,” which referring to the marginal rcadipg is “a. leviathan’’ m Joi) 3.8. It is the Banks’ policy or vocation lo look after money which is a disequil

librium. It is its proper job. It is not the intention to refer to poliics in a derogatory sense, but to be polite or cunning is a natural phenomen. Natural phenomen. Natural law is always referred to as Dame Nature being dominant and so the passage in Jeremiah 9.17 should be quite clear. Prof. Gerstan Cassel says:—“These popular fallacies are by no means innocuous. They form the basis for much misdirected criticism of our entire social social structure and effect people’s attitude towards important economic questions, actually resulting in far-reaching State interference in the economic sphere.” It will be noticed that the two different lines of thought run in parallel « so that when political reforms give us their stock-in-trade that the system is •’rotten.’’ we can reply that it always is so. Hard effort, whether physical or mental really is a “painful malady.” Thanking you for the space.—l am, etc., ERNEST A. AIKEN. 'K .Waverley, 26/8/35. j