REPLY TO BANKER

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXIX, Issue 150, 22 June 1934, Page 7

REPLY TO BANKER

.BY DOUGLAS CREDIT LEADER. I THE REAL INFLATIONISTS A vigorous reply to an atttack made by Sir Harold Beauchamp in his address to the shareholders of the Bank of New Zealand on monetary reformers was made by Colonel S. J. E. Closey, chairman of the Dominion Council of the Douglas Social Credit Movement when addressing delegates from the Hamilton district on Saturday.

Sir Harold had praised the Englisn methods of promoting recovery, he said, but the position was that the Bank of England had issued £300,000,000 in an inflationary attempt to restore prices and had just managed to produce a Budget surplus. Sir Harold apparently still believed that the depression was due to the influence of the tides and sun spots and disagreed with the World Economic

Conference of sixty-three nations which expressed a contrary view. Criticising Sir Harold’s disapproval of planned economics, Colonel Closey said that he was out of step with

leading economists and with every educated person, even Mr Coates. The only note of hope in Sir Harold’s address was the comment that wool prices were due to drought conditions in South Africa and Australia. When a banker applauded the sufferings of ruined farmers, there was a fair expression of the mentality and morality of the

people the currency reformers were attacking. Such sentiment was absolutely anti-social and anti-humane. Sir Harold had expressed gratification that the world’s population was increasing in a greater ratio to wool production, but he had ignored the growing use of rayon and other substitutes and changing fashions. Colonel Casey asserted that Sir Harold was talking Douglas Credit

when he referred to the huge national and local body debt. It was increasing bank indebtedness, which had crushed the country. It was inflation of the worst kind, yet because the Douglasites wanted a stable system and the removal of such debts, they were called inflationists.