Finance—Public & Private
The Past Year NEXT week I hope to say something with regard to financial prospects for the New Year. It has, however, always to be remembered that the line between one year and another is but an imaginary one, and so closely are the events of the New Year the outcome of the one which has preceded it that any careful consideration of the prospects for 1933 must be based on a true judgement of the significance of the developments of the year which has come to a close.
The occasions seem to be few when there is excessive grief at parting with the old year, or, it is good to add, when there is not a welcome given to the New Year, with fresh hopes aroused. Certainly for some years past it has become almost a habit to regard the closing year as one of unprecedented depression so that as regards the year following one sometimes even hears the ex- pression that " it can scarcely be worse than the one that has gone." But while, of course,' there is some excuse for this sombre feeling of recent years, I think that to some extent it is to be accounted for, simply, by failure years ago to realize the magnitude of the disaster of the Great War of 1914-1918. That there was such failure is evident from the very fact that in so many quarters the disposition was to look for a speedy recovery.. To find ourselves, therefore, fourteen years after the conclusion of the War with an unexampled world depression and with unprecedented figures of unemployed constitutes a staggering blow to the super- ficial optimist.
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