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.

APPENDIX 543 brokers in another. They gravitate together because that makes a market, and markets make values certain. (IId) Conant in his “Wall Street and the Country” (pp. 92-93) asked the then hypothetical question, “Suppose for a moment that the stock markets of the world were closed, that it was no longer possible to learn what railways were paying dividends, what their stocks were worth, how industrial enterprises were faring—whether they were loaded up with surplus goods or had orders on hand. Sup- pose that the information afforded by public quotations on the stock and produce exchanges were wiped from the slate of human knowledge. How would the average man, how even would a man with the intelli- gence and foresight of a Pierpont Morgan, determine how new capital should be invested? He would have no guides except the most isolated facts gathered here and there at great trouble and expense. A greater misdirection of capital and energy would result than has been possible since the organization of modern economic machinery.” It is interest- ing to reflect that in large measure, just this situation resulted when the world’s stock exchanges closed at the outbreak of the war in 1914, and just the predicted chaos occurred. But in 1914 there was the further problem that it was not so much a question of knowing how to invest more, as knowing whether, under the circumstances, one reallv had anything to invest! (Ile) “There is a difference in the effect of inflation in one kind of business from that which obtains in another . . . It is specula- tion in land and speculation in inventories that I fear more than specu- lation on the Stock Exchange. Speculation on the Stock Exchange may be an evil, but it is an evil which is quickly corrected. In the event of a sharp decline in securities on the Stock Exchange various individuals who have been speculating in the hope of a rise, may lose money, actual money or paper profits; but the loss in the main is confined to those individuals. When, however, the volume of bank credit is extended to an excessive extent to those who are engaged in industry, leading to inflated inventories, you have a collapse of a large number of industrial concerns and resulting unemployment. “The situation is even worse if it happens in the case of agricul- tural lands. If agricultural lands reach a price which is not justified by current income, actual or prospective in the immediate future, the damage is ten-fold greater than it would be from a decline on the Stock Exchange, and much greater than in industry, because the farmer’s home is attached to his occupation, and often he cannot liqui- date, without breaking up his home, as well as his occupation. Thus vou have in the case of inflated farm-land values a long and painful

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The work of the Stock Exchange

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation