The work of the Stock Exchange

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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.

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XVIII. The stock exchange as an international market

Collection:: Economics Books

532 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE ties have been comparatively insignificant when compared to our vast total foreign investments. The test of successful investment, foreign as well as do- mestic, is apt to consist in whether its purpose is productive. Loans to foreign governments to be used in building up arma- ments are not of course in this category, and for just this reason may harm investors as well as hostile powers; the great losses suffered during the war by French investors largely arose from the fact that they had been financing both sides of the irrepressible Balkan conflict. If foreign loans are made for really productive purposes, their effect is to increase the debtor’s wealth, to enable ready payment of interest and repayment of principal, and to raise wages and improve standards of living in the debtor nation. Dr. Schacht, then President of the Reichsbank, was fundamentally right, however, when he criticized certain German municipalities for borrowing funds here at high rates of interest to build stadia and war memorials. In the past, non-productive foreign loans to new communities in Africa and South America have had a more sinister outcome. Hobson even declares that “capital has been employed in numerous instances to drain countries of their resources, to weaken them economically, and to de- grade them morally.” Certainly the record during the nine- teenth century of foreign loans made by European nations affords sufficient cases ewhere great burdens of public debt have been thrust upon ignorant and impoverished peoples through the irresponsible greed of their temporary political leaders. In some cases, European underwriters must share blame with the grafters who alone benefited from the proceeds of the loans. Finally, there is the danger that too many foreign invest- ments may endanger the moral fibre of the creditor people by encouraging them in laziness, vices, and luxurious expendi- tures. Such fears, of course, apply almost as well to domestic as to foreign investment, and belong as much in the sphere of morals as of economics. It may be, of course, that America

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