Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 24 December 1932, Page 4

Tun views of the British Government urnm the quowtiou oi uiiiiecalliisiu were cnsc.oseci by tile Chancellor of vlie H.\iliequ-&r, Mr Neville Oiiainherlain, in a. sncucii in the House of Commons fast- iiii;,iilr. ' lie sain tlie question was wiictudr 1 ua ; in pi’Cash in tne available slock of go.d, or i.i the available stock of t..e equivalent of gold in inker, would einvidu the wholesale prices of commodities to rise throughout the world. One must reuieni..er .that the available supplies of gold had enormously increased, in 19-U ti.ey wee equivalent to about £1,003,000,000; now they were equivalent to £2,50),000,003. They inul, therefore, increased t, times in the last 00 years. The proposal wa.s that the nations of the world slioula agree to accept a proportion of silver at a iixod rate to help gold, and the price of silver saould lie tiie mark©: price. But if the price of silver was going to be the market price, it was not going to be any particular inducement for the hoards of silver to come out of India and China. • Supposing they could raise the price of silver from Is Od an our.ee,' which it was to-day, to 2s, and suppeeing they got by that means 1,0C0,Ofh/.OtlOoß. °f silver to come forward, what <!it| that mean? It was only going to mean an addition of the equivalent supplies, wliicj;! were 2500 millions. That was -too small—only -I per cent—to have any appreciable effect. That seemed to be a very great difficulty, and. in the light of that, he did not see how it could be argued 'that the bringing, in of silver to help out gold , was, in the present of the, world, going to be any effective help, even supposing that they could get, what be was quite certain they could not get, the agreement of all the main central banks to adopt that system.