This is a test …
“Meanwhile, there was a new trend in corporate finance. From __A___, as the boom developed, the new corporate issues took more and more the form of stocks instead of bonds. This policy of reducing the proportion of bonds had one good effect. It left the corporations less encumbered with debt; so that, despite the ___B___, many corporations kept in a strong position throughout the whole of the __B__. This advantage, however, was more than offset by shifting the debt burden from the corporation to the shareholders. That is, in order to buy the stock, many persons borrowed, so that, instead of being indebted collectively in the form of a corporation, they became indebted individually … This preference for investing in equities instead of bonds was fostered by a number of statistical studies, published in books and articles, which showed that almost always in the past, bonds had produced less income for the investor than had been (or could had been) produced by a diversified assortment of common stocks … The new trend was further intensified by the formation of investment trusts whose express business was to invest the money of their clients in diversified stocks. These trusts began to spring up like mushrooms, and presently became a mania. Many of them operated on borrowed capital, leaving precarious equities… America promoted and aggravated abroad the same unhealthy boom which was putting forth our neighbors and ourselves in position for a slump… In seeking new issues to feed to a ravenous public, disregard for the debtor’s ability to pay, for the possibility of effecting payment by willing and able foreign debtors, and for existing interest of security holders in concerns to be reorganized or consolidated, marked a high portion of the financing during the period. The governing consideration seems to have been ‘can the issue be sold at a handsome profit?’”
By __[C]___
Fill in the blanks for [A], [B] and [C] |
