Share warning by Sir Robert

Press, 25 August 1986, Page 4

Share warning by Sir Robert

PA Auckland Smail sharemarket investors stand to hurt the most when the present high prices fall, says the former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon.

A tragedy would occur when the “blue sky in those share prices evaporates and collapses like a house of cards,” he told a meeting of Howick Jaycees.

“Those who will be hurt the most will be the small investors, because the bigger active investors will be the first out.”

Sir Robert said the present bonanza in the financial sector could not exist for long side by side with the depressed rural econ-

omy, which was gradually affecting metropolitan areas.

He blamed what he termed the destruction of the rural economy on the Government, which he said was “largely composed of failed lawyers, schoolteachers and junior lecturers.”

Economic policies based on simplistic monetarism and a totally free market had been discarded academically and had failed in every other country where they had been practised, he said.

Sir Robert criticised the union movement, which he said was “living in an earlier age .fighting battles that were won half a century ago.”