NORTH AMERICA'S DEPRESSION DEEPENS

From Eric D. Butler, Winnipeg, Canada
As I moved into Winnipeg, the headlines read, "New House Must Grapple with Inflation", "Record Number of Foreclosures", and Trudeau Government "is facing the same nagging economic problems - inflation, unemployment, a growing deficit and record interest rates that hounded the previous Liberal administration and the minority Progressive Conservative government."
A spokesman for the Mortgage Insurance Co. of Canada, the largest private mortgage insurer in the country, says that soaring interest rates are a major cause of Winnipeg property owners defaulting in record numbers. And there is worse to come.

Right across North America the pattern of depression is deepening as the astronomical interest rates take their toll. Beef prices are following a fall in pork prices with the result that farmers from both the U.S.A. and Canada are raising their voices in bitter protests. Farmer protest marches of a few years back are again taking place. The Trudeau Government has offered a few crumbs of relief with subsidised interest rates for a few groups, but the overall message from all the "experts", including leading bankers, is that high interest rates are essential to "break the back" of inflation.

Reports before me from right across North America show that there is no sign as yet of even a slight reduction in the inflation rate, but that tens of thousands are being driven from their homes, farms or bankrupted in their businesses. The "experts" offer the consolation that the present interest rates will start to fall in about six months. These "experts" should know because through Central Banking they have been responsible for the big increase in interest rates. As there can be no substantial reduction in the inflation rate under present financial policies, it is certain that after six months of the present policies North America will look like an economic battlefield, with casualties which not only effect the economies of the U.S.A. and Canada, but which inflict psychological wounds upon tens of thousands of individuals who may never recover from them.

Coinciding with the growing number of defaults on mortgage payments is a steep increase in the rate of marital breakdowns. A farmer attending a recent meeting raised the question of the moral damage, instancing his neighbour, a younger farmer heavily in debt, who said that the present high interest rates would force him out within six months, and that his marriage was suffering because of the strain. Evidence also indicates that the suicide rate is also increasing in North America.

Needless to say, no physical or other natural disasters have overtaken either the U.S.A. or Canada. The Northern Hemisphere Spring is bursting forth in that marvelous transformation of a countryside, which has been hidden under a desert of snow for months. The sun is shining, hopefully the spring rains will fall, and the crops will grow. Vast natural resources abound. Factories and skills remain intact. God's profusion of abundance is to be seen everywhere. The only defect is a man evolved financial system.

Creating the money-credit "tickets" of the nation is easier than, for example, printing railway tickets. Treating money as a type of commodity, which should bear the highest possible interest charges, is a manifestation of that worship of Mammon, which we were warned about a long time ago. Permitting those who create credit to claim it as their property, when in fact it should belong to the members of the community whose real credit - productive capacity - alone gives financial credit any value, is a degrading surrender of a people's heritage.

While sympathetic to the viewpoint of the irate young man whom, after telling me at a meeting that he feared for the future of his young family as a result of the interest rate increases, charged that if I were a "genuine Christian", I should join him in kicking down the doors of the Money Changers and whip the managers, I had to stress that bank managers are merely carrying out the directives from the Central Bankers. The first essential was to make it clear to the politicians who in a democratic country should dictate financial policy, that their political futures depended upon the reversal of present destructive financial policies, including crushing taxation and immoral interest rates.

Unless what is left of the democratic system is used to force a change in financial policies, which are the basic cause of the growing world unrest, including the expansion of Communism, then the prophets like Malcolm Muggeridge may be proved right in their view that the disintegration of Civilisation will continue beyond the point of no return. But this need not be so. God has endowed man with free will. We can use it.

ANOTHER HANDOUT

Australians will no doubt be thrilled to hear that Prime Minister Fraser has presented Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe with $5 million. The presentation was made at the independence celebrations in Salisbury, which were marked by the death of two people and the wounding of 27 others in a township outside the capital. On the same night 234 inmates of Salisbury's Central Prison overpowered the warders and escaped. No doubt the inmates just wanted to make their tribute to Mugabe alongside Malcolm Fraser.

TIME (April 28th, 1980) gave details of the aid so far committed to Mugabe: Britain will give $166.5 million over the next three years; the United States is providing $15 million this year, and between $25 and $30 million in 1981; the United Nations has offered $140 million in refugee aid; it will be interesting to see how much of this is to be allocated to the betrayed whites who wish to leave their native land with a remnant of dignity.

Time said: ".... Pondering on these modest sums (the promised aid) a few Mugabe associates wonder ironically whether this is the result of the Prime Minister's moderation. As one senior government figure put it; "If we had turned to Moscow after the election, I assure you we would have been drowning in dollars and pounds now...."

There is still the question of Joshua Nkomo, the figurehead for the Ndebele people, traditional enemies of the Shona, from whence comes Mugabe. TIME reported: ". . .about 5,000 guerillas loyal to Joshua Nkomo, Mugabe's partner in the former Patriotic-Front, refused to return from their bases in Zambia, largely because of suspicions arising from their leader's marginal role in the new government..."

Meanwhile, Lord Soames, the interim governor in Rhodesia prior to independence, and director of a Rothschild banking company, has visited Mozambique, where he has promised Marxist Samora Machel that Britain will rebuild the railway between Rhodesia and the seaport of Beira, which provides docking facilities for Soviet warships. Time reported: "Someone asked Machel: "How did aid from capitalist Britain square with his Marxist principles?" "Our Marxist principles stand," he replied, hoisting a glass of French champagne. "Don't you like drinking champagne in a Marxist country?"

BRIEF COMMENTS

We have seen no reports in the Australian press that the Republic of China (Taiwan) has been expelled from the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.). Not only has this occurred, but even more significantly - Communist China has been admitted to the International Monetary Fund. This was only as expected as "America" expanded trade with Peking after some few years of formal diplomatic recognition: large American financial houses now have their representatives in Communist China.
The Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the following declaration on April 18th: "The Board of Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund, in yielding to the absurd demands of the Chinese Communist regime, and in illegally de-recognising the membership of the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in the Fund, has decided to admit the Chinese Communist regime as a member of the Fund…"

One of our Richmond (Vic.) supporters, who has recently been in Ulster, has sent us an article from The Sunday Express (London) April 16th, written by Sir Ronald Bell, Tory M.P. for Buckinghamshire. He wrote immediately after the Bristol race riots, and we reprint the closing paragraphs without comment: - "Our politicians in office have been too frightened of self styled progressives of every shade, frightened of media, frightened of what they imagine to be world opinion. "They are too frightened now even to ask in the next census how many people of immigrant descent we now have here. They are too frightened even to change the crazy law that lets Southern Irish vote in British elections; or the oppressive law that makes it a crime for people outside Parliament to speak their real thoughts about immigration.
"These frightened men have something real to be frightened about now. Their duty was to safeguard the nation. Over twenty years the nation has been betrayed. They conspired, across the boundaries of parties, to conceal their cowardice with a syrup of soothing assurances. Now an awakened and alarmed public will demand action - not declarations of deep concern, but action.
"Some of what has happened in the locust years may have to be lived with: but the very least that public safety requires is the immediate end of Commonwealth Immigration. Our leaders will never be forgiven if, with a mulish unconcern, they go on adding to Britain's most dangerous and unnecessary problem."