LATER DEVELOPMENTS.
• With the removal of the official barrier, we have during the last two years made quite a number of foreign loans, and, considering our reduced export trade, it has been some source of satisfaction to find that there was anything like a surplus of savings for reinvestment in foreign securities. During this same period, however, there have been certain developments, the significance and import- ance of which, I think, have been insufficiently grasped. The first is the growing superabundance of wealth in the United States, so that the surplus is now apparently even in excess for what is required for developments in that great Continent, leaving a large amount available for loans to other countries. Another point is that these same conditions in America have tended to lower the value of. in New York, thus making that centre at times the cheapest one in which to borrow. The third point, coincident with these developments in America, has been the growing visible adverse trade balance in this country by reason df the prolonged depression in our export activities. It is not merely that the total of our exports has been fiffected by exceptional conditions prevailing in certain foreign countries, but the proportion of our share in the world's trade as compared with other countries has also declined.
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