HOPE FOR FUTURE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20311, 22 May 1934, Page 5

HOPE FOR FUTURE.

Plenty of Capital at Low Rates of Interest. STIMULUS TO INDUSTRY. “ While there remain many difficulties to be overcome, particularly in international affairs, I feel that we are well on the road to more prosperous times,” said Mr E- H. S. Hamilton, chairman of directors of the United Building Society of Christchurch (Permanent), when reviewing the past year at the annual meeting of the society last evening. Mr Hamilton declared that it was his opinion that as soon as industry and commerce realised that there would be a long period of plentiful supplies of capital at low rates of interest for the purpose of genuine development and expansion they would find, with an improvement in world conditions, a rapid improvement in conditions in New Zealand. “One of the greatest problems which investors have had to contend with in the last two years has been to employ capital to yield a reasonable return,” he said. “This is not a local condition, but one w'hich is being experienced in practically all the important countries in the world. In periods of prosperity interest rates are relatively high, whilst in periods of depression they are definitely low except in the early stages of the depression. The depression now passing has been no exception to the rule. The infallible law of supply and demand predominates, and at the present time the supply of credit and money far exceeds the demand, and it cannot be claimed that the minimum rate has been reached. Ultimately there must come a time when confidence and enterprise return and borrowers will become more numerous. With greater demands for advances interest rates naturally will harden but it is not possible to forecast how long it will be before that time arrives,”