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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 21. September 3 1979

Fiscal Foolery

Fiscal Foolery

Social Credit has stopped trying to explain its monetary policy. It proclaims that people aren't fooled by cries of "funny money" any more. The idea is that if this proclamation is kept up loud and long enough people will forget there ever was anything to be fooled about in the first place. Now that Socred has drafted the "New Zealand Credit and Currency Bill" everything is supposed to look respectable and foolproof. As if any financial system will mechanically work well just because it exists.

Beetham stated at the conference: "The new confidence the country want can only come with financial reform and that will only come with Social Credit." What does this reform involve? To start with, Socred takes a convenient premise: "Economic laws are usually conventional laws and therefore can be altered if required" (RSJ Rands: The Problem of Money.) This is patent nonsense. If it was actually true, couldn't we just make up economic laws to get us out of the crisis? Yet that is exactly what Socred wants to do.

There are several different strands to the Social Credit economic theory, which have been given varying importance at various times. The strands have two features in common. One, they all assert that somehow or other there is a permanent shortage of purchasing power in the economy. Two, they fail to grasp the realities of modern monopoly capitalism.