A BANKER’S MISGIVINGS.

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18777, 27 October 1932, Page 9

A BANKER’S MISGIVINGS.

(To the Editor.) * Sir, —In last Saturday’s issue of'the Times appears a report of a speech made by Mr Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England. The writer was struck particularly by the following passage: “The difficulties are so'vast, the forces so unlimited and so novel, and precedents so lacking that I approach thd whole subject in ignorance and humility; it is too great for me, I am willing to do my best," etc. Surely Sir, so frank a note of futility from suoh a source should give the most complacent of us muoh food for anxious thought on matters financial. This eminent gentleman has been described by Lord Beaverbrook as a good man with a bad policy. In conjunction with the other leading financiers of the world 'Mr Montagu Norman has bent all his energies and talents to the furtherance of a deflation polloy. The return of Britain to a gold standard was encompassed by untold suffering among the operatives of all British industry. The departure from the same was a reversal of this, suicidal policy. It now appears that this so-called financial genius, is feeling ignorant and humble at finding things “as you were." The only hopeful feature of his case in the writer's opinion is that he is apparently honest. It would be a bootless and thankless pastime to speculate as to whether the avoidable hunger, sorrow, suicide and so forth, which his fruitless and desperate polloy has caused in so many homes, would weigh upon his peace of mind. It appears to the writer that his difficulties arise 'from unforeseen forces in the, mind of the masses. Hitherto they have always lain down tamely to these periodic man-made depressions, but in this case they have the lesson of the prosperity due to an expansive currency policy during the war. The frozen credit factor is also due to the fear of the modest braves who are not wishful to risk their dots in further production for a glutted market. N;o, Mr Norman, those unprecedented faotors, and. that herd instinct, which you refer to so contemptuously, are the features where the solution will be found. The herd refuse to accept a bankers’ depression to order, because some of them know better and the leaven is spreading fast. Moreover your cheap money for production fetish is the same old mistake of regarding the production as the end, and ignoring the consumers’ case. Finance consumption, Sir; devise your system to do a double-barrel job; call in the advice of Major Douglas, and Professor Soddy and they wfjl turn your humility into the greatest asset ever bestowed upon suffering humanity.— I am, etc., C. A. MAGNER. Te Kowhai, Oct. 24, 1932.