The extreme care with which so-called securities or new issues of bonds are scrutinized in this market nowadays is shown in the opposition which has sprung up to the proposed listing on the New York Stock Exchange of $3,500,000 new Georgia State bonds. While money is a glut in the markets and our banks are now carrying a larger idle reserve than ever before known in the history of business, there is no disposition to permit Southern repudiators to come in and secure any part of the funds. The application to the Attorney-General to permit our savings banks to “invest” in the bonds, and the request that they be listed in the Stock Exchange, aroused New York bankers to action, and their opposition has been so far very effective. It has had this good, at least, that it has revived attention in regard to the repudiation of old obligations of Southern States. By its act of repudiation, Georgia mulcted the New York investors to the tune of millions. I know of one banker who now holds more than $2,500,000 of these bonds, on which there is an interest accumulation of twelve years’ duration, and at least three leading financial institutions were carried to the wall by the same means. Now, it is considered very poor grace for the modern Christian statesmen of Georgia to pass around the hat again. Let the State first repudiate its repudiation, pay up old scores, and then it will be quite early enough to ask for further loans. The argument that the credit of the State is really benefited by the repudiation, as she has so much less obligations to meet, is a quaint one, and worthy the source from which it emanates. This is not the sort of “prosperity” that invites further investment of Northern funds.—Syracuse, N. Y., Sunday Herald.
Georgia Bonds.
When a Georgia bond is put on the market, our Democratic friends cry out “Great is the Credit of Georgia.” They claim that Georgia pays all of her obligations whenever they are due, knowing their claim to be utterly false. Georgia has not only repudiated legal obligations, in the hands of innocent purchasers, but she denies the parties who have paid value for her bonds the right to take the judgment of her own courts on the validity of those bonds. So in the bond business the State of Georgia acts not only the role of the thief and robber, but also of the coward. The man who claims that Georgia meets all her obligations is simply a liar.
Respecting State securities, investors are showing a very proper discrimination against the issues of States tainted with repudiation. The action of the Superintendent of the Banking Department of this State, in forbidding savings institutions from investing in the new issues of the bonds of Georgia, has attracted attention to the danger of investments thus tainted, and is very generally approved by the investing public as a check to future acts of this kind. The disposition shown by certain managers of savings banks to put the funds in their charge into such doubtful securities should be strongly condemned; and it is a question whether it is not necessary, as a protection to such depositors, to make such a use of the deposits of the poorer classes a penal offence.—Weekly Financial Circular of Henry Clews & Co., June 6th, 1885.
How the Georgia Bonds were Negotiated.
The following circular explains the manner in which the Georgia bonds were negotiated with my firm: