Except in Brazil and Peru, where Japanese immigration is very important, Ibero-America has received its immigration mainly from Spain, Italy and Germany. Therefore Axis activities in these countries, if coordinated and directed, can become a political factor of unpredictable consequences. Such a result will be reinforced if a government of the tendencies represented by Laval is to prevail in France, which has enormous cultural prestige in Ibero-America. Among the immigrants a majority of the Italian colonists may be regarded as politically favorable to totalitarian action, but a big minority, mainly in Argentina, and the enormous majority of the Spaniards, are resolutely opposed to such action.
In recent years the totalitarian barter system has reached such proportions that it may well be pondered whether world trade relations as we have known them are likely to be undermined and transformed by it. Such a situation would be accompanied by epochal changes. The exchange of goods and services would be determined not by comparative costs, as it has been determined within the network of multilateral trade agreements, but by the specific bargaining positions of the bilateral partners--as creditors, and as monopolistic consumers. And the political power position of the stronger partner would tip the scale that weighed the values of the exchange rates.
That government is a business is an assertion that no longer requires proof. We have heard the statement time after time over many years. We have heard also its corollary -- that what we need is more business in government, more of the application of business-like principles to government. The subject that I shall discuss here is the budget -- the document that treats of government as a business, the annual financial statement of the government considered as a business institution.
During the depression the question was raised of the role that fiscal policy could play in an effort to bring about a permanent adjustment of the economy. Those who regard the discrepancy between the propensity to save and the demand for capital as one of the fundamental maladjustments conclude that fiscal policy can play an important role with respect to structural adjustments. Such fiscal policy must either absorb savings through continued government outlays of borrowed funds or reduce savings by taxation. Spending would meet even more opposition as a permanent than as a cyclical device. Therefore the question must be raised, with respect to cyclical and even more to structural adjustments, of whether tax policy can accomplish the objectives which have been assigned to a spending policy.
The obsolescence rate of aircraft determines the time table of an aggressive power within a very short margin. Any future peace settlement based on a balance of power will have to take account of this fact. If peace should be dictated after an overwhelming victory, the victory, it can be assumed, will see to the complete destruction of the aircraft production facilities of the vanquished, and will monopolize for himself air traffic and plane production throughout his sphere of power.
In this article, Ernst Karl Winter engages the reader with a sweeping historical survey of Austria’s intricate history of economic and sociopolitical movements, schools of thought and reform initiatives.
An extensive survey of contemporary economics literature dealing with economic planning, including works by Bruck, Ezekiel, Lawley and Stevenson.
Review of book by Arthur Nussbaum. Chicago: Foundation Press. 1939. 534 pp.
Review of book by James C. Bonbright. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1937. 2 vols., 1271 pp.
Review of book by Condliffe A. Loveday et al. Sir Halley Stewart Lectures, 1937. London: Allen and Unwin. 1938. 134 pp.
Review of book by William E. Rappard. Lectures of the Harris Foundation, 1938.] Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1938. 288 pp.