DEFLATION: Gnashing of Teeth

He that had received the five talents went and traded with them and gained another five talents, and likewise he that received two gained two more. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth and hid his lord’s money.

After a long time the lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them . . . and he that received the one talent said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man . . . and I was afraid, and hid thy talent in the earth. . . .

And his lord answered . . . Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Of his own volition, into outer darkness leaped John Milton Nichols last week.

Mr. Nichols, called “One Hundred Per Cent” because of his policy of keeping his First National Bank of Englewood, Ill. on a 100% liquid basis, hated the New Deal with a glacial hate. To depositors he said: “Go bury your money in a tomato can in your vegetable garden.” He quit making loans, spurned new checking accounts, wrote down $24,000 of Federal Reserve stock to 10¢, and siphoned out of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank some $2,500,000—most of his bank’s reserve—which he stuffed in deposit boxes. Increasingly bitter and violent about the New Deal, Banker Nichols declared last year that he would liquidate if Roosevelt was reelected.

With the teeth-gnashing pronouncement that he was retiring from the banking business for “the duration of the Roosevelt-concocted emergency,” last week Banker Nichols made good his threat.