After Leslie Waller. Woods Palmer sipped his coffee and sat back in his chair

(to be continued)

Woods Palmer sipped his coffee and sat back in his chair. “What do banks do with money? We keep it in vaults where it can’t be stolen, except occasion­ally. We invest it in bonds and stocks and mortgages and business and per­sonal loans. We handle it. We channel it. We tell it what to do. We mold it and teach it. We create it.”

“Money? What do we do, print it?”

“Almost literally,” he said.

“Is that legal?”

“Perfectly,” Palmer assured her. “As a Federal Reserve Bank, we create a brand-new dollar out of thin air for every four dollars we take in.”

“Is that good?”

He slapped his hand palm down on the arm of his chair. “Stop asking philosophical questions. It probably is the worst thing that could happen to the United States of America and our great-grandchildren will pay for it dearly. But right now it’s the money that makes our particular mare go.”

“In other words, we’re responsible for printing money that isn’t based on silver?”

“In other words, we’re creating inflation,” Palmer told her. “But infla­tion is what the American people want.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“It’s not a question of belief. It’s a fact. People want to buy all kinds of gimcracks, twenty-one-inch color television sets, two-door refrigerators, overpowered automobiles. They refuse to wait until they have saved up money. Like little children, when they want something they want it now. All right, behind every automobile and television set stands a man willing to sell it on credit. But he can’t wait thirty-six months for his money; when he sells something, he wants to be paid now. So, behind him stands a finance com­pany, an acceptance corporation or an accounts-receivable factor. They pay him the money and get paid for the favor by charging his customer carrying charges. But they need their money now, too. Where do they get it? Most of them don’t have enough money to cover the tremendous amount of time buying that goes on. So, behind them stand the banks, providing the money, and more money, until the supply of money begins to run a little short. You wonder where it’s all coming from. But you know where it’s coming from. It’s rolling off the printing presses.”

He stopped, suddenly aware of the fact that his voice had grown in inten­sity until a man two tables away glanced at him. In the odd silence that fol­lowed, Palmer stubbed out his cigarette and wondered why he had got so excited.

“You were beginning to sound like a philosopher there for a second,” Virginia Clary said then.

“I do have a philosophy about money,” Palmer admitted. “It’s an archaic one that would probably wreck the country inside of a week if we ever put it into effect. It’s a banker’s view of money with centuries of banking behind it. ”

She leaned forward toward him, watching very closely now. “Tell me this explosive philosophy.”

Palmer laughed briefly, without much joy. “ Don’t spend what you don’t have,” he said then. “So simple. So impossible.” He laid his hands palms up on the small table between them. “When you see a lovely gimcrack, resist the urge to own it at once. Save for it. Then buy it. Chances are, by then the urge to own it will have passed, anyway.”

Her rather full eyebrows drew together in an expression of pain. “Oh,” she said, “what a terribly limited way to live. I wouldn’t like it at all.”

Palmer shrugged. “If by limited you mean disciplined, yes.”

“Disciplined? Does that sound any better?” She shook her head. “It’s a bleak, stark, cold way of life. No adventure, no excitement.”

“No problems, no crises.””

“You see?” she pounced. “It isn’t a way of life at all. It’s a preview of death.”

“Nonsense.”

“What is life all about?” she asked. “Problems and crises. Seeing some­thing lovely and wanting it now and taking it and paying for it later.”

“Whose life are we talking about?” Palmer wanted to know.

She frowned again. “Yes,” she said, “that’s right, isn’t it? Not everybody wants to live that way. I forgot.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Palmer watched the upturned palms of his hands, then turned them over on the cool table top. His palms

Celt moist and he wondered why. “At any rate,” he said, “no matter whose life we’re discussing, the philosophy is mine.”

Her great eyes opened as wide as they could and she seemed to be taking a deep breath. “If you’ll forgive me for saying so,” she said, “it’s the philos­ophy of a man who’s never wanted for money.”

Palmer sat perfectly still for a moment, then withdrew his hands from the (able and placed them in his lap. “You are probably right,” he said after a while in a voice that sounded to him entirely devoid of any feeling. “The whole idea of deferring desires comes easily to someone who’s never had to.”

She looked down at the place on the table where his hands had been. “I didn’t mean to imply,” she said in a deliberately slow manner, “that having money automatically gratifies all one’s desires. I don’t for a moment think there are things money can’t buy. Goodness, no. But, having bought them, they don’t always gratify the buyer. Everything is for sale, apparently, but when you get it in your hand, it isn’t always the same as it looked in the shop window.”