WORLD TRADE

Hokitika Guardian, 2 September 1930, Page 7

WORLD TRADE

CREDIT TOO RESTRICTED. VANCOUVER, August 30. “The world, is interested in Australia’s financial problems, because what is handicapping Australia is also worrying the world,” says the Vancouver “Sun,” in an editorial. “The Left Wing of the Australian Labour Party suggests the repudiation of Australian debts, a five years moratorium and the mobilisation of the community credit. This is the first official squawk that will be repeated round the Western world, if there is not made quickly a realignment of the world’s credit and a reapprisal and reappor-

tionment of the world’s metallic money—silver and gold. The debt ot Australia is serious. Australia, however, with her great producing areas, is probably in a much better position to pay her debt than England. What Is bankrupting Australia is also bankrupting and paralysing all of the big producing nations olf the world. That is the lock of world buying power! What is causing the lack of world buying power is the unsound distribution of world credit, and the refusal of the European bankers to rdcogmse the necessity of restoring silver as one of twelve in the world money token with gold. There are only ten billions of gold in the world, and though the hoarding, the restrictions, the embargoes and the mad scramble ifor gold, the yellow metal is getting into fewer and fewer hands. Chinn, India, South America and those countries that have only silver money have but small world credit, and they have had the buying power of their silver money out to 35 per cent, of its 1870 value, and they are gradually being forced out of the market for world commodities. This reduction in the purchasing power of the silver-money countries is the reason why world trade is slackening off. That is why the surpluses of goods are everywhere piling up, ana it is the real reason why the world’s trade faces stagnation. Must Australia go brankrupt, or will the' Australian; surpluses again start moving to world markets? How else can the latter alternative result, than by restoring the buying power of. Asia and of the .other silver countries ? Can England’s economic peril be.averted? It has been sound business for the world to allow a small population like Australia to pile up a debt of six billions. Surely, it is necessary—and sound business—for the international bankers to restore silver and thus ,establish credits that will start the worrd surpluses moving towards the millions, of feet and backs that are bare and the mouths that are hungry among the billions of people of Asia. If the pound sterling is'not to go the way of the French franc, the German mark, and the Russian rouble, there is an urgent need for the international bankers and the so-called world leaders to prove themselves, worthy of their responsibilities,