United States Economic Mission - La Paz, Bolivia

File under TRUMAN BART "NATIONAL - 1 - ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY RECORDS SERVICE" The United States Economic Mission is deeply grateful for the honor being shown it tonight and appreciative of the opportunity for presenting to such a distinguished audience certain views which must be widely understood if the program of economic cooperation upon which our Governments are embarking is to be truly successful and lasting. In some ways the position of Bolivia and the United States today is similar to that of the United States and Europe three-quarters of a century ago. At that time much of our country was as yet undeveloped, and we lacked the capital to harness and utilize our natural resources. Europe supplied us the capital, and as the years passed, the United States became more and more a country of real rather than of potential wealth until the point was reached where the generation of capital within the country itself was so great that we not only returned the credits which Europe had furnished us but built up a great reservoir of capital available for development outside of our own borders. The outward stream of capital from the United States started in World War I and had that stream remained within the banks of common sense, its effects would have been much greater and more useful than was the case. Unfortunately, the stream became an ungovernable flood and, for a time, it was forgotten that capital is not unlike water in that the right amount can make a country flourish, but either flood or drouth can cause incalculable damage. This is the first and most fundamental lesson to be drawn from the international financial experience of the last 20 years, and it forms the basic premise upon which any successful program must be built. Bolivia has many resources which only await the ferti lising influence of capital to come to life. The United States has that capital in abundance. The question which the Economic Mission has had before it always is: How can that capital be used safely, from the