Dealing with the subject of prices in their monthly business review for July, Barclays Bank Ld. say:
The feeling that the summit of high prices has been reached continues to depress certain markets and to exercise a restraining influence on buying. Even in the retail trade, there is evidence that purchases are being deferred for Jower prices and that an increasing number of buyers are, for the moment, refusing to purchase anything. they can do without. On the other hand, sellers are not inclined to cut prices where this step can be avoided, and it results that in many markets quotations are nominal with little new business passing.
It is dangerous to dogmatize on the immediate future course of prices, but it is difficult to see any thing in prevailing economic contions, either at home or abroad, which justifies the assumption that a drastic and permanent fall general prices is at hand. The primary causes for the consistent increase in prices witnessed during the past six years were under-production and that enormous expansion of credit which resulted from war finance. The proportion of purchasing power to goods available for purchase was greatly increased, with the consequence that the value of each unit of purchasing power decreased when expressed in terms of goods. As "money" was plentiful and goods were searce, it was inevitable that in competing for the commodities they needed, individuals and Governments should bid one against the other and thus force prices higher and higher.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.