THE RIGHT END.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16192, 19 March 1913, Page 8

THE RIGHT END.

The Prime Minister is wise in his day and generation in boasting as he did at "Waimato last night of Mr James Allen's "marvellous coup" in raising the recent loan at this end of thftransaction. For a time even tho amateur financiers will ho confused by the comparison between tho cost of raising Mr Allen's loan and the cost of raising Sir Joseph Ward's last loan and Mr Myers's loan. But when the amateur financiers realise that the costs of the earlier loans are all piled on to short term* whil e the hiah in-

terest on Mr Allen's loan will have to bo paid for forty years they may begin to make unpleasant calculations. The credit of the dominion is as sound now as it ever has been, and after the confession of Mr Masscy and his friends that they wcro decrying it only for the purpose of discrediting their political opponents, it never will bo affected again by party intrigues; but tho country may have to pay very dearly for Mr Allen's determination to raise a long-dated loan in a dear markot. It is easily conceivable that in the course of a year or so the market will assume its normal condition and in that case it will bo found that our latest loan is our dearest. Mr Massey's announcement that with the exception of " two special parcels" the whole of this loan has been taken up by tho public dees not necessarily place the seal on Mr Allen's reputation as a financier. The public have taken up the debentures because they regard them as tho best investment they can find even when short-dated loans at a higher rate of interest and quite as fully secured are on tho market in abundance. We havo no doubt that the Minister of Finance did what he thought best for the dominion and that he was well advised by tho experts he consulted, but it is far too early to proclaim his success to the wide world as an achievement for whien tho people of New Zealand should bo profoundly grateful at election time.