FINANCE AND INVESTMENT
(Continued from page 108.)
A BANKER'S VIEW OF TRADE
With his contacts at so many strategic points of the business and financial machine the banker occupies an enviable position as an economic observer. He is deeply interested in trade, but not oppressed by its day-to-day problems ; he is " in the City " but not obsessed and afflicted by mere fluctuations in market values. His view of trade, taken at some distance but not too far from it, is therefore likely to be at once the more balanced and the more penetrating. For this reason it is a pity that the bank chairmen vouchsafe their views to us only once a year, and then at a season fixed arbitrarily by their annual shareholders' meetings. This year Mr.
Edwin Fisher, chairman of Barclays Bank, leads off, and enhances his reputation for shrewd and incisive judgement of the business situation.
Mr. Fisher makes no attempt, like the " blue sky " school of optimists, to argue that there is no trade recession—" We cannot ignore the fact that recently there has been some fall from the high levels of production and employment attained earlier in the year," and he reminds us that rearmament expenditure must, in the long run, "tend to depress the standard of living." But he is not pessimistic, nor does he side with those who look " with unwholesome persistence " for the slump which they feel must be round the corner. The bank's own experience, strikingly illustrated in the sharp rise in advances, has testified to the high level of activity maintained over a very wide range of industry, and he sees no reason, given a prosperous America, why trade improvement should not continue.
When he comes to international affairs Mr. Fisher sighs for freer trade, a revival of foreign lending, and currency stabilisation, all of which, he recognises, depend on a revival of confidence. He reminds us, too, that the effect of war has been to disturb moral as well as material values. I cannot assess the value of this moral factor in the world's financial problems, but it obviously means infinitely more than any- thing in the nature of political ingenuity or financial skill.
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