The Cheap Money Scheme.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 196, 18 February 1895, Page 2

The Cheap Money Scheme.

The Maoriland Government Loan Department is now fairly started, and in 1Q years or so some of tho pessimists of to-day will have a fair choice to decide whether the scheme is a failure or not. So far as present appearances go the situation is something like this : There are £30;000,000 lent on real estate mortgages in Maoriland, and the average interest is 7 per cent, or a little more, therefore the community pays £2,100,000 a year, and still owes the same old £30,000,000, which never shifts one iota. Under the Government schena. borrowevs will pay 5 per cent interest, and I per cent towards redemption oi the principal which will thereby he extinguished in 36 years. Therefore, if the old mortgage business of the country can be gradually absorhed by the. State, or — what is the same thing — if the private lender can be forced down to. the. State's terms, the country will pay £l,800,000"a year for principal and interest instead of £2,100,000 for the interest alone, and in 36 years the saving to th,e community will be a small trifle of £24,000,000. The Bulletin has remarked^ the same thing before, but out of defer* ence to a slow and thick-headed community which absorbs new ideas very gradually it hereby states it all over again, to impress upon Australians the necessityfor trying a similar experiment. — Sydney Bulletin.