which the subscriptions of the public are invited, and in the meantime
it will probably happen that the newspapers have had a hint that a
Ruritanian loan is on the anvil, so that preliminary paragraphs may
prepare an atmosphere of expectancy
While the underwriting is going on the prospectus is being prepared by
which the subscriptions of the public are invited, and in the meantime
it will probably happen that the newspapers have had a hint that a
Ruritanian loan is on the anvil, so that preliminary paragraphs may
prepare an atmosphere of expectancy. News of a forthcoming new issue is
always a welcome item in the dull routine of a City article, and the
journalists are only serving their public and their papers in being
eager to chronicle it. Lurid stories are still handed down by City
tradition of how great City journalists acquired fortunes in days gone
by, by being allotted blocks of new loans so that they might expand on
their merits and then sell them at a big profit when they had created a
public demand for them. There seems to be no doubt that this kind of
thing used to happen in the dark ages when finance and City journalism
did a good deal of dirty business between them. Now, the City columns of
the great daily papers have for a very long time been free from any
taint of this kind, and on the whole it may be said that finance is a
very much cleaner affair than either law or politics. It is true that
swindles still happen in the City, but their number is trivial compared
with the volume of the public"s money that is handled and invested. It
is only in the by-ways of finance and in the gutters of City journalism
that the traps are laid for the greedy and gullible public, and if the
public walks in, it has itself to blame. A genuine investor who wants
security and a safe return on his money can always get it. Unfortunately
the investor is almost always at the same time a speculator, and is apt
to forget the distinction; and those who ask for a high rate of
interest, absolute safety and a big rise in the prices of securities
that they buy are only inviting disaster by the greed that wants the
unattainable and the gullibility that deludes them into thinking they
can have it.
