The housing question

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1023104237

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-61777

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: The housing question

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (125 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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STOCK EXCHANGE AN INTERNATIONAL MARKET 531 intellectual ability to profit by the mistakes which others have made.3° An even more complex problem, not without possible dan- ger to our national interests, arises from financing foreign industrial production which may come to compete successfully with our own. On this score, Hobson said in respect to British investments in the United States, “. . . it might be urged that the export of capital to America had hastened the day when Great Britain should become a relatively insig- nificant power in moulding the destinies of the world.” ®* It seems obvious that it is more to a creditor country’s advantage to build up productive facilities in the debtor state for non- competing products, such as railway transportation, electric power and light, and the like. Yet even here reduced manu- facturing or transportation charges within the debtor country may in fact materially cheapen the price of its competing exports in the international markets. On the other hand, creditor communities can sometimes profit more from invest- ments in new and distant competing industries, than from endeavoring to protect their own industries against inevitable shifts in production centers; it is, for example, well known that the astonishing development of textile mills in North Carolina has largely been accomplished with Massachusetts capital. Of course, all arguments regarding the benefits of foreign investment fail if such investments are in poor securities and result in heavy or complete losses to the lenders. In this regard, it is better to give money away freely as a charity, than to lose it, and also litigation expenses, grudgingly. Such unsuccessful investments also are apt to have the same evil effect upon the borrowers as promiscuous and unwise charity is apt to upon habitual beggars. If we cannot invest safely abroad, it would probably be better not to invest at all. Thus far, however, losses to American investors on foreign securi- "See Address of President E. H. H. Simmons, “The Myth of American Imperial. bo, og iT Eiheunry Ah 199, D. Xviil

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