The severe decline in the price of valuable securities following the economic depression has caused serious embarrassments in various directions, the "Japan Chronicle": reports. Particularly insurance companies, which always keep enormous amounts of securities in reserve, find themselves placed in a dilemma and are ready to petition the Government authorities to assist them.
According to the Insurance Year Book of last year, the securities held by the insurance companies aggregated—Y.189,500,000. It is astonishing to learn that this large figure should fall to Y.70,000,000 or even to Y.50,000,000 through the recent slump. This may be an excess sive estimate of their depreciation, considering that the holdings always include stable securities like national, foreign, and provincial public bonds and debentures, whose fluctuations are confined to small figures.
Without reference to these questions, however, it is obvious that all the underwriters have sustained far heavier losses than they had expected to. The conclusion is come to that even when considered in the most favourable light, the losses' incurred amount to at least 20 or 90 per cent. of their property. other figures, they total from Y.40,- 000,000 to Y.60,000,000.
There is the problem of how the underwriters will balance these astonishing losses. The authorities of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, in this connexion, say that it is too one-sided am arrangement for the insurance companies to come down upon the Government because of their sufferings through the decline, they being very well aware of the fact that alt securities are by nature precarious. The authorities fear that this matter, which is not confined only to underwriters, may bring about a condition where the economic world will find itself more agitated and: more uneasy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.