VAST CHANGES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 478, 11 March 1933, Page 5

VAST CHANGES

(Press Ass*1 —

america's system CONSERVATIVE BANKERS CAPITULATE, TO ROOSEVELT AN ERA OF INFLATION

-By Telegraph— Ce-pyright.)

New York, March 9. Behind the outward drama of an extraordinarily humble Congress to-day accepting without quibble or f emonstrance the 'sweeping dictation from the President for drastic chan'ges in banking and finance, was the even greater drama of capitulation of the once strongest forces in American economic life, namely the great conservative bankers and financiers who generally accepted and approved of the new philosophy. This philosophy, may in the simplest terms, be, described as important concessions to the great creditor classes of America. Not only did members almost universally approve tbe new banking 1 bill, which in ten hours from its introduction, ob.tain the consent of both Houses-, but Mr. Herbert Hoovep him- j self,'who had been supported for re- ' election by the chief banking figures | of the eountry against Mr. Roosevelt, j approved the measure in a statement i to-night. However, behind Mr. Aldrich's I statement, asking for a divofeemeiyt j of flotation banking from commercial banking, has been the acceptance by the "prjest of the conservative banking cult" of the once cordially hated "progressive liberalism" in financial matters of Mr. Roosevelt.

To-night, there is still the greatest uncertainty whether to-morrow banks will open, or what banks will do so, or to what degree the general public can hope to find itself returned to that degree of financial normality which it has so long desired. Details of the deep changes contemplated are too vast and complex to effect, but the significances are inescapable. America has finally been launched on a stream of inflation, and only time will tell whether tbe dire warnings by the "money lords" as the Wall Street bankers have been dubbed that the sound money era is over, are justified, or whether "easy money" as it is being called, represents only salutary "reflation" rescuing debtor classes, reviving business and rehabilitating commodity values, which until now seemed faced with utter extinction. Foreign observers see the drama in America as a eonflict of classes or sections with large agrarian areas in the south and west wresting control of the nation's economic forces from the financial and industrial leadei's.