INTERNAL LOANS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21598, 19 March 1932, Page 9

INTERNAL LOANS

SUGGESTED INTEREST REDUC- • TION STOCK EXCHANGE PROTEST. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, March 18. ; The Wellington Stock Exchange has sent a letter to the Prime Minister (Mr G. W. Forbes) and the Minister of Finance (Mr W. Downie Stewart)- expressing in the strongest terms its fears of the consequences should the Government reduce the return to internal lenders who have invested in Government loans. The letter says that on a previous occasion the Wellington Exchange said that such a solution of present difficulties should only be applied as a very last resource, and out of dire necessity. (Its meaning was, and still was, a necessity arising after every other source of revenue had been drained to the utmost drop.) “In the past the credit of the Dominion has stood high in the money markets, and an appeal is made to maintain that high standard, no matter how we might be pressed, and what other dominions might do. It is submitted with all due respect to the members of the commission that the suggestion, as affecting interest payments, if acted upon will not make for equality of sacrifice. The effect of reduced interest will be so far-reaching as to embarrass the Dominion for many years, and place a stigma for all time on New Zealand.”

The members of the Exchange are alarmed at the consequences in the immediate and distant future if the sanctity of national contracts is sacrificed.