industry by means of a further indiscriminate expansion of credit would not only endanger our position as the financial centre of the world, but would inevitably lead before long to grave disaster."
It also laid stress on the need for the immediate cessation of State borrowing after the end of the war. It pointed out that commercial capital issues had been largely in abeyance since the beginning of the war, and that consequently there would be a very heavy demand by trade and industry for new capital, and that State borrowing could only be undertaken in competition with these demands. It further expressed the opinion that any Government guarantee to bankers to enable them to provide by means of credit the fixed capital expenditure necessary for the re-constitution of industry was undesirable as being likely to cause a further expansion of credit, together with an additional rise in prices.
This Committee by laying down these principles thus took a firm stand against the many prophets who were proposing to lead us into a new economic Paradise, merely by the unlimited expansion of credit. It pointed out that for capital purposes what was required was not credit but capital, and that capital could best be provided, not by making entries in the
