Safety through savings
INVESTMENT, says the Chancellor, is booming — it is rising twice as fast as consumer spending, as it has over the last five years. In manufacturing industry, in- vestment this year will be up by almost one fifth. We have not financed these increases out of our savings (which on balance have been going down) so foreigners have fi- nanced them instead. Still, on these latest forecasts, we would be rash to assume that the foreigners will go on pumping money in
until the day, however distant, when the investment pays off in the form of exports. We must channel our own savings to our own industrial and commercial investment. The channel needs to be as deep as that which now draws money into house- ownership. The Chancellor's autumn state- ment is often seen as the first half of the Budget. I can see in this one the portent of change — of incentives for savings which would finance investment — in the Budget to come.
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