Banking and Finance, 1933–61

Abstract

The expansion that had been triggered by the rise in the gold price in 1933 continued with only slight interruptions until the Second World War and the inflation that accompanied it. After 1945 there was no postwar slump and deflation comparable to that after the First World War, and growth continued throughout this period, being only temporarily shaken by the National Party’s victory in 1948 and the flight of capital that accompanied it. Inflation was almost continuous in these years, but it was of a very mild form compared with what has happened since 1961. In 1961 the total assets of the commercial bankers were still well below a billion pounds. If the assets of the life insurance companies are included they amounted to approximately one billion pounds, and if the resources of the building societies are thrown in, the grand total amounted to around one-and-a-half billion pounds, massive by prewar standards, but small by those of 1990.