INTEREST BURDEN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19994, 20 July 1939, Page 14

INTEREST BURDEN

REASON OP HIGH COSTS

IXOHPGN'IIENT’S OPINION (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. In the course of his speech on the Acdress-in-Reply in The House of Representatives last evening Mr. H. Atmore (Ind., Nelson) said that interest rates were tire sole reason for the high cost of living, not the increase in wages. He went on to show how interest rates were ever increasing throughout the world. Britain, he .said, was still paying

interest on the cost of the Battle of Waterloo. It was not by reducing wages ap the previous National Government had done that the cost of living could be reduced; it was by reducing interest rates.

After contending Iliat the National Government had been responsible r or the slump conditions in the Dominion. by" decreasing people's purchasing power, he went on to deal with the effect of high interest .Larges in New Zealand. There were very few 4local bodies throughout the Dominion which were not paying over 10s in the £ of revenue in interest charges alone. This was happening all over the world and increasing interest rates were swallowing up the income of every local body and of Governments themselves Leave conditions as they were a bit longer, he said, and the whole world would have to repudiate.

New Zealand, he said, .was not repudiating its debts in London, and would not do so, but he would like the Government to make it plain to the London financiers that she would not pay a penal rate on her loans there.