MYSTIFIED MR ALLEN

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8648, 5 February 1914, Page 4

MYSTIFIED MR ALLEN

When the Hon. James Allen permitted himself to be interviewed in Dunedin the other day he declared that it was difficult to say why money was so plentiful in London at the present time —so plentiful that the New Zealand loan of four and a half million was subscribed several times over —and then our extremely sagacious and logical Minister for Finance went on to claim that the success of the loan must be largely attributed to the great and manifold virtues of “Reform.” Now, we ask seriously, what sort of a statesman Mr Allen takes himself for if ho finds it difficult to give a reason for the present plentiful supply of money for investment. Does he know nothing about the relation of cause and effect? Does be imagine that the easing of the London money market is an accidental circumstance ? Is he of opinion that anybody who knows the elementary principles of finance is as puzzled at the conditions, or as ignorant of the causes, as he confesses himself? It is the most childish rubbish to pretend, or try to pretend, that anything the New Zealand Tory Government has don© or has not done can have stimulated applications for o'ur loan on the part of investors in England. How, for instance, does this square with the fate of a Prussian loan the other day, which was subscribed in London seventy-two fold? So far as we are aware, Prussia has no selfstyled “Reformers” of the saintly Mossey-Allen-Fisher type, and yet her loan was infinitely ahead of ours from the point of view of over-subscription. And- West Australia, too, with no heaven-born Tory “Reform” party, but a Labour Government in power, asked the British lender for £2,000,000 and was promptly offered £11,000,000. It almost looks as though Mr Allen does not read the newspapers. If he did, he would surely not bo so mystified at the change in the money market. Everybody concerned in business and in finance—that is, everybody except Mr Allen—has seen the improvement coming. Xt is hut the natural and inevitable result of a widespread trade depression in the Old Country, on the Continent, and in America, which has freed capital for investment in securities such as this and other developing countries have to offer. And Mr Allen, who holds the responsible portfolio of Finance, is confessedly mystified, and can think of no operating factors except the imaginary virtues of his bogus “Reform” party! It is pathetic to find a Minister of the Crown either so dreadfully ill-informed or else so determined to talk absolute nonsense.