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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 28, No. 11. 1965.

New Knowledge

New Knowledge

From that standpoint, reinforced by the revelations of Reginald McKenna and others, the journey has been slow but steady towards the present knowledge as to the nature and origin of money:

• The bulk of money today has no physical existence whatever, even as paper. (A. de V. Leigh, sometime secretary to London Chamber of Commerce).

• The money supply of the community consists of the notes and coin in actual circulation in the community, together with the total of trading bank deposits, including the deposits of the government and government departments with the Reserve Bank. (Reserve Bank of NZ).

• The total amount of money in the community varies only with the action of the banks, etc. (McKenna).

Financial difficulties were not considered during the war, but what about the aftermath? The nineteenth century had naively attributed the so-called trade-cycle to sunspots. It had meekly though not without protest, accepted the "hungry forties."

The twentieth century made strenuous inquiry, when after the armistice of 1918, prices fell disastrously, cargoes on their way to overseas markets became almost worthless, and to my own knowledge, sturdy NZ farmers wept when bales of wool and other produce of their labour went for a few shillings.

C. H. Douglas raised the voice of protest in Britain as early as 1920. He wrote:

Hardly had the last stretcher case reached a casualty clearing station in a grim and haunted silence, when a bleat of anguish rose from these sheltered shores—not from the battered wrecks in the hospitals, not from the sad-eyed women in black, but from Lord Inchcape and other bankers. We were a poor, poor nation, they said, no homes for heroes for us, At the most we must be contented with a few Nissen huts.