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Hokitika Guardian, 11 October 1922, Page 2

In Im book on conditions in Europe. Mr Frank A. Vnnderlip. who was an unofficial observer for the United States at various international conferences. strongly denounced Germany’s currency inflation by use of the printing press. He says: “Let us now examine wliat occurs when a nation’s expenditures exceed its income from taxation, and, being without the political courage, or perhaps lacking the credit to make up the deficit by borrowing the Treasury liegins to print currency to fill the gap in qhe Budget. If I were an incarnate devil whose sole objective was to bring upon human beings a reign of injustice and misery, and could use only one instrument for that purpose, I should choose a Government printing press. With it, I could bring about a chain of evil events which would paralyse industry make a mockery of thrift, and effectively undermine morality. It is difficult- for anyone who has nut experienced the evil results that inevitably follow ' prolonged inflation to comprehend what a diabolical instrument i tlio currency printing press.”

Whiting of the ell'eet of paper money on prices. Mi Vandcrlip says: “In Vienna T paid u taxi-cah driver sixty times the amount registered on the meter. When that, was translated into gold, the real value of the payment was so small that it was hotter to keep the cab all day than to take the trouble to dismiss it and Inter pick up another. I remember riding in cabs m Berlin, and finding at the end of a considerable journey that the bill translated into gold values was four cents, although I had jsaid ten times what the taximeter registered. Prices cannot he readjusted rapidly enough even approximately to keep pace with the decline in currency. Storekeepers find their stocks sold out, and are nimble to replace them with the money they have received. Merchants are left "hopelessly bewildered as to what course to pursue. When the value of a currency becomes depressed almost to the vanishing point, traders begin It' deumi" 'l "thfT firms of i tyment, and

decline to name prices in local currency. It is at that point that the real l.nnki'uptcy of the nation begins. When its output of legal tender paper will no longer be received freely in exchange for goods, same other means of (al lying cn commerce must be devised. No matter lio'.v much a currency is inflated. no matter how desperately low its value measured in the world’s excjhnneg falls, the memory of its old time worth remains in the minds of people who are accustomed to ils use. They ascrilie as to its value which it no longer possesses. In consequence there nre innumerable hoards of almost worthless currency in nearly every country in Europe.”