Ezra Clarkson was Minister of Finance in the Cabinet of Governor-General Douglas Watson from 1932 to 1938.
Clarkson succeeded John Hopkins, who had served as Finance Minister under Watson after losing the contest for governor-general to him in 1929. As Finance Minister, Clarkson soon became aware that the National Financial Administration's confederation-level branches were becoming overextended due to lax lending policies and a growing rate of business failures among its investees. Clarkson brought the matter to Watson's attention, but Watson was more focused on the international situation and his arms program, and he let the matter slide.
The N.F.A. situation came to a head in February 1936, when John Jackson, the President of Kramer Associates, announced that he was moving the company's headquarters from the United States of Mexico to the Philippines. When it was discovered that Jackson had been selling K.A.'s securities on the world's stock exchanges for weeks and buying gold, the world's stock markets suffered an investor panic. The New York Stock and Exchange Board suffered a fifteen percent drop in value on 25 February before closing its doors, prompting Clarkson to fly to New York City and pledge Treasury support for the banks. This appeared to defuse the situation, and the New York Exchange reopened its doors on 1 March.
However, Jackson's announcement had set off a wave of business failures, especially among N.F.A. investees, and on 14 March Wilson McGregor, the N.F.A. Administrator for the North City, Manitoba branch informed Clarkson that he would be unable to meet the interest payments on N.F.A. bonds that were due that day. Clarkson rushed Treasury funds to North City to meet the crisis, and the bondholders were satisfied. However, word of the shortfall leaked to the press, and by nightfall the news had been broadcast to the entire nation. By 17 March all of the N.F.A.'s branches had closed their doors, and the institution was bankrupt. The collapse of the N.F.A. brought on a global depression in 1936, and the inability of Clarkson and Watson to restore prosperity to the Confederation of North America led to the defeat of Watson's Liberal Party in the 1938 Grand Council elections.
After the fall of the Watson government in February 1938, Clarkson began work on a history of the panic, The Financial Crisis of 1936: Prelude to Tragedy, which was published in New York in 1940.
Sobel's sources for Clarkson's tenure as Minister of Finance are Clarkson's account and Jack Buchanan's The Financial Crisis of 1936 and Its Causes (London, 1966).