POST-WAR ECONOMICS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 94, 17 October 1940, Page 10

POST-WAR ECONOMICS

PROBLEMS FOR STUDY

NEED FOR ANGLO-AMERICAN CO-OPERATION

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 15. The elements of post-war economic stability are discussed in "The Times," which says: "Lord Willingdon's mission to South America will be largely concerned with the disposal of the large surpluses of food and other commodities accumulated in those countries, partly as a result of the British blockade. It will have to consider how Britain can co-operate in the policy laid down in resolutions of the Pan-American Conference for the orderly and systematic distribution and sale of these surpluses. "There is a great opening here for Anglo-American co-operation in the economic field, and that the co-opera-tion need not be confined to the American continent is shown by the agreement between them last week over the Australian wool clip. Britain and the I United States have a common interest jin the financial and economic stability of the primary production countries, and this will not end with the war.

"The two great democracies must needs get together betimes and create machinery to prevent a recurrence of the catastrophic fluctuations which culminated in the great depression of 1931. These alternations of boom and slump have' undermined the whole economic structure. Primary production is the base upon which is built the whole complex structure of indus' try, trade, and finance. When there is no stability at the base, the superstructure cannot be prevented from tottering.

"At the end of the war both the British Government and the American Government will find themselves in control of great quantities of all the main foodstuffs and raw materials. It would surely be a fatal error to dissipate these stocks instead of using them to lay the foundation of a more stable economic structure. This work should be taken in hand now, when everyone is animated by a common purpose, and not put off till after the war.

"There should be no more effective reply to the Nazi jibes about plutodemocracy than to show by practical action of this kind that democracy is capable of reconciling the claims of individual and national liberty with those of economic security."