KAISER LOSES A MILLION.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 November 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

KAISER LOSES A MILLION.

AMERICAN SPECULATION WHICH WENT AWRY. New York, September 23. The Kaiser lias lost no less than £1,000,000 of his private fortune in the last twelve month, by ill-judged speculation in American war cotton and securities. This is the startling declaration made by the Providence Journal, which has already provided some of the most sensational disclosures of the war At the outbreak of war the Germans tried to unload in Wall Street their holdings of American securities. Their efforts to do this were thwarted by the closing of the New York Stock Exchange along with all the leading bourses of the world. Disappointed in their plan to turn liquid securities into cash, and this in turn into war supplies, they essayed to use the crisis in the south, and made heavy purchases of cotton. Anticipating early reduction of British sea supremacy, thereby opening the way for their southern cotton, they held too long, and in the end sustained heavy losses on their purchases. After the re-opemng of the Steel Exchange and before the real upward swing in prices, German interests sold American securities heavily on advances and again sustained large losses, because they sold too soon. In both these fields of enterprise the speculation in American stocks, the private' fortune of the German Emperor was to some extent interested. His representatives "bought too high and sold too low," with the result that part of the shrinkage in the Kaiser's personal fortune since the war was inaugurated, is directly traceable to operations for him on the New York Exchange. Persons presumably competent to speak authoritatively say that the Emperor William is poorer by at least . £1,000.000 than he was a year ago.