CONTROL OF PRICES

Waikato Times, Volume 196, Issue 22549, 6 January 1945, Page 4

CONTROL OF PRICES

PART PLAYED BY BANKS Mr J. H. Lawrie, secretary and London manager of the National Bank of New Zealand, chairman of the British Overseas Banks Association and vice-president of the British Bankers’ Association, who is on a five months’ tour of branches of the National Bank throughout the Dominion, declared that if sensible co-operation existed between the leading Governments of the world, and between those Governments and the banks and business communities of their own countries, there was no valid reason why there should be a world-wide slump after the war. Mr Lawrie said that in recent years, and especially during the war, Governments, trading banks and central banks had drawn closer together and had assisted each other in carrying out agreed economic policies. For instance, it was essential in wartime that every available unit of labour should be employed, and therefore consumption of luxuries, even of things that in normal times must be regarded as necessities. had been reduced. When goods were not available prices rose unless they were controlled. When prices and wages started to chase each other, injustices and anomalies always followed, and the economy of the country became disjointed and ultimately chaotic. “This is the reason why the stabilisation policy in New Zealand is so important,” he added. “The aim of most Governments is to foster a state of full post-war employment. If Governments, banks and business communities co-operate as well as they do in wartime there is a good chance of our avoiding in peacetime the disastrous alternation of booms and slumps which has occurred in the past.”