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Show LOOSENING UP THE BANKS. We have heard a great deal of late about how prosperity would return if the banks would only "loosen up" and lend some money. But it is a little lit-tle difficult to follow this kind of reasoning to any sort of conclusion. The same people who tell us this also say that the only thing required to restore prosperity is a return of confidence. con-fidence. Now if there is to be any loosening up of the banks it will follow fol-low a return of confidence, not precede pre-cede it. The banks have come in for a lot of criticism during the past few years and a great deal of it may be deserved, deserv-ed, in certain specific instances. But it will not be fair to blame the banks for the present frozen condition of ; credit. It is to be remembered that congress at its last session appropriated approp-riated a lot of money to the RFC to be loaned to deserving borrowers in an effort to stimulate business. Well, believe it or not, the RFC hasn't been putting out any more money than the banks have. Evidently the RFC heads know as well as the bankers bank-ers do, that something besides enthusiasm en-thusiasm is needed to make a man a good borrower. It is to be remembered that the money which the banks have on hand dosen't belong- to the bankers it belongs be-longs to the depositors. Just the same, the money which congress appropriated appropriat-ed to the RFC for lending purposes doesn't belong to the RFC or to congress. con-gress. It is owned by the people. No banker likes to lend his depositors' money to borrowers who may not be able to pay it back. The bankers still have unpleasant recollections of what happened during the credit boom days of a few years ago, and they have not forgotten who had tc take most of the blame for what happened. Neither Nei-ther do they like to lend when the value of the dollar is subject to change. The fact is that the fellow who is "good" can borrow of the bank but in most cases doesn't care to. What he wants is not more money to expand his plant but more business to keep running the plant capacity which he now possesses. And to Jnd to the fellow who had a wild.' scheme for making money would abofe call down on the banker the wrath of the bank examiners.. It all goes back to the old tough and knotty problem of restoring national na-tional confidence. The bankers want to know where we are going as a nation na-tion .before they start lending money right . and left, and business wants to. Know where we are headed before it starts borrowing money to expand right and left. Until'--; we do know in which direction direc-tion we are headed, and how soon our national budget is going to be balanced, bal-anced, we are apt to have the same sort of a credit situation we have today. It was only a few days ago that Dr. Edwin W. Kemmerer, the Princeton Prince-ton authority on economics, declared in an address to the American Bankers' Bank-ers' association that common stocks were now a better buy than high-class high-class bonds. He based this opinion on his belief that we might be headed for inflation, in which event equities would be better than fixed1 interest bearing statistics. Dr. Kemmerer may be unduly pessimistic, but until we do know more about our monetary ! future there will be no great return I of confidence, and no great loosening up on the part of the banks of America. |