INTERNAL BORROWING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 184, 10 July 1940, Page 6

INTERNAL BORROWING

FOREIGN DEBTS A LIABILITY "Our national debt, already astronomical, will be even bigger at the end of the war. But it is now, and will go on being, an internal diebt, which makes all the difference. A foreign debt is a liability, just like any private loan, to the debtor,'' writes Professor Lindley M. Fraser, of Aberdeen University, in tlxe Daily Mail. "But if we'borrow from ourselves and pay back to ourselves, we arc really, however formidable the figures may look, only pooling and then redistributing the national wealth. "Think of a family with a father and sons, all of them earning wages and paying their share of the household expenses: If the woman of the house, who does the housekeeping, hap to face seme special expense— say, the roof has started to leak and must be repaired—then it makes all the difference whether she gets the money from her husband and sons* 01* whlether she goes along the road to a moneylender. If the family itself pays, then they all have to tighten their belts for the time being, but afterward they have a sound roof over their heads and are no Avor.sc off. If she goes to a money lender she will probably manage to ruin herself and her whole family. That is the great advantage of internal borrowing."