Archive for November, 2008

The Golden Ball

I used to carry happiness
Like a golden ball,
I had to walk so timidly
For fear I’d let it fall.
But someone snatched it from me
And threw it to the sky -
Now my arms are empty
There’s none so brave as I.
Elizabeth Hollister Frost
Source: The Outlook, May 23 1928

Introduction of Personal Loans Part 3

The spread of the personal loan department idea, moreover, will enable borrowers to snap up bargains which otherwise they might have been forced to let pass. A young couple, for instance, has a chance to buy a set of dining-room furniture at a ridiculously low figure, but have not enough cash on hand. [...]

Introduction of Personal Loans Part 2

The advantages to the borrower are even clearer. Attorney-General Ottinger, of New York State, has made a long investigation of the loan shark industry, and he has found that an uncomfortably large proportion of his fellow-citizens have been paying interest ranging from 14 to 36 per cent for loans which they could not, in most [...]

Introduction of Personal Loans Part 1

A Bank Taps a New Stratum of Customers
THE National City Bank, the largest institution in the United States, has opened a new era in banking by the establishment of a Personal Loan Department which will make personal loans without collateral to salaried men and women in amounts rang-ing from $50 to $1, 000.
Interest will be [...]

The Four Year Bull Market Part 3

STOCKS declined about 5 or 10 per cent in October and it looked as though the depression in business was to be the dominant factor. The recession, though, was brief. Prices soon headed upward once more.
Since speculation was becoming rampant and foreign countries had taken all the money they needed, the Reserve banks started to [...]

The Four Year Bull Market Part 2

THE most serious interruption to the stock market advance came in the early spring of 1926. The conditions which apparently brought it about are worth reviewing because they resemble in many ways those which have prevailed for the last few months.
There was no let-up in business activity. The records show that commerce and industry were [...]

The Four Year Bull Market Part 1

OBITUARIES of the “Coolidge bull market” may be premature but the long and persistent advance in stock prices that has lasted for four years has already become one of the major events in American financial history.
To the speculator who trembles when one of his issues drops five or ten points, its course may have seemed [...]