The work of the Stock Exchange

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1831284952

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-225876

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Meeker, James Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/126597340

Title:: The work of the Stock Exchange

Edition:: Revised edition

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Ronald Press Company

Year of publication:: [1930]

Scope:: XVI, 720 Seiten; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. The dangers and benefits of stock speculation

Collection:: Economics Books

[54 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE which are enacted each year are primarily due to our own unwillingness to perform the duties of intelligent citizens. If we get bad laws, we have ourselves to blame for it. One of the seemingly perennial sources of economic legis- lation that is unenforceable and harmful is speculation and the various forms it takes in the business world of today. Justice Holmes of the United States Supreme Court has tersely and shrewdly stated the situation regarding such legislation :* It’s true that the success of the strong induces imitation by the weak, and that incompetent persons bring themselves to ruin by attempting to speculate in their turn. But legislatures and courts generally have recognized that the natural evolutions of a complex society are to be touched only with a very cautious hand, and that such coarse attempts at a remedy for the waste incident to every social func- tion as a simple prohibition and laws to stop its being, are harmful and vain. The same general point—the impossibility of adequately and successfully halting speculation by statute—was testified ‘0 by the late H. C. Emery, probably the highest economic authority on speculation in America :* You cannot stop speculation in industrial securities, and you cannot stop speculation in anything by any process of law. Just as long as he value of property fluctuates, men will buy and sell with a hope of profit. There will be speculation of some kind. If you throw it out »f an organized exchange, you throw it out into the street. If you -hrow it out of Berlin you can throw it into London. But somehow and some way, just as long as wheat fluctuates in value, people are going to buy and sell wheat; just as long as land fluctuates in value people are going to buy and sell land. Just as long as stocks fluctuate in value, people are going to buy and sell stocks. Legislation and Economic Principles.—That this view of the matter is correct is borne out by the experience of all nations at all times. Particularly in the typical instance of the much abused short sale, the most meticulously drafted regu- lative laws passed in England, Germany, France, and this coun- 34 Chicago Board of Trade Case, May 8, 1905. 85 “Reonlation of the Stock Exchange.” n. 325.

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