Mr. Roosevelt and the Banks President Roosevelt's Budget is his
boldest venture yet, but no one will say a word against it. At last the President has given up the psychological method of raising the gold-price and fallen in with the policy urged long by liberal economists. The programme provides for more borrowing, more spending, and a balanced budget in 1986, by which time the national debt will have risen to close on 82,000,000,000 dollars. By this stroke the President wins two victories. He gets money from a patriotic America for his public work schemes and the refinancing of banks and industry—enough money to send prices easily to the 1929 level within a year. Prices have, in fact, immediately responded. Simultaneously, he rivets his hold more firmly still on the banks, which have opposed his recovery experiment from the start. Already he controls one-third of them through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Now he will have still more money with which to• help them out of their difficulties—at a price ; and public opinion will force them to take up the greater part of his recovery bond issue. They will thus become financially interested in the success of the President's schemes. And since they have been the main opposition so far, the rest of the way to recovery should be easy. * *
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