FINANCIAL NOTES.
The City liked the speech made by Mr. Beaumont Pease at Lloyds Bank meeting last week. Especially did his remarks concerning that vexed question of Monetary Policy find favour in banking circles. To put it briefly, Mr. Beaumont Pease emphasized the fact that the keen desire of all banks to make advances to trade constituted a sufficient guarantee of legitimate trade ' never being curbed for lack of credit facilities. Mr. Beaumont Pease stoutly challenged the assertion that the recent slump in trade was to be connected with the monetary policy of this country, and having cited the fact that the slump was experienced all over the world, he said : "Is it not more natural to attribute it to the simpler cause that the expectation of demand for all sorts of goods at the end of the War did not come up to expectations ? "
In dealing with much that has been said on the question of the gold standard, Mr. Beaumont Pease expressed some diffidence in approaching the subject in view of the fact that some of the brilliant protagonists of the proposal to scrap the gold standard and set up a new standard, - based on an index figure of prices, had stated that the intricacies of the theory were beyond the intellectual capacity of bankers to grasp. "One drawback to the proposal, therefore," said Mr. Beaumont Pease, "even from the point of view of its supporters, is that the task of adopting the theory and of putting it into practice would be largely left in the hands of those very people who are considered incapable of understanding it ! '
A. W. K.
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