The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, September 29, 1891. BANK FRAUDS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 665, 29 September 1891, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, September 29, 1891. BANK FRAUDS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’et at bo thy country's, Thy God’s, and truth's.;

Those who agitate for a State Bank have certainly new force given to their arguments by the frauds that are now being exposed in Australia. When the financial panic occurred in the Argentine the system of the State Bank was made to bear a great deal of the blame, but the disasters occurring in Australia make State intervention of some kind clearly a necessity. A recent cablegram said that a former managing director of the Australian Mercantile Loan and Guarantee Bank had a salary of £te>ooa year (besides a /To,ooo overdraft) for doing nothing. It was omitted to state that he did a great deal though in the way of duping innocent people. The London Economist recently described the majority of these property mortgage and deposit banks as “ cancerous growths upon the colony’s sound financial business.’’ The genuine banking institutions have a most dishonest competition to put up with on the part of those financial sharpers. A contemporary writing of the Australian Loan and Guarantee Bank and its former manager, states: — “That managing director managed, with the aid of coadjutors as unprincipled as himself, to bleed hundreds of hard-working, thrifty men and women, who were allured by the glittering promises of large profits on shares and exceptionally large interest on deposits. They have been swindled, and they have practically no remedy, save that afforded by the criminal law, which really supplies no satisfaction at all. What good is it to the man or woman who has lost the savings of a lifetime, to be able to send a swindler to work on the roads ? The money is gone, and the punishment of the thief brings small comfort to the party that has been robbed. On the same date as mentioned above came another cable from Sydney stating that two more ‘financial institutions’ had suspended payment. This makes more than a half-dozen collapses of the same kind in Australia within as many months. It appears to us that it ought to be the imperative duty of the State to guard its citizens from being plundered by shoddy financial institutions, which assume the title of ‘ banks,’ ‘ investme n company’s,’ etc., and which take away a large amount of business from the genuine banks that have to be content with offering moderate interest to their depositors, and moderate profits to their shareholders, because they are determined to meet their engagements.” The strange thing about the Australian Land and Guarantee Company is that it was started a few years ago by an uncertificated bankrupt, with a bogus cash balance and /Tooo salary to himself as managing director. At the half-yearly meeting in June there was shown to be a credit balance of £3OO to carry to reserve, but now a deficit of about £l lO,OOO is shown !