Before Depression the volume of new capital that poured into industry was a torrent. Then it dwindled to a trickle. The figures on the prolonged drought in new financing:
1929 $8,639,000,000
1932 325,000,000
1933 161,000,000
1934 178,000,000
1935 403,000,000
1936 1,217,000,000
1937 (8 mos.). . . 918,000,000
Why the trickle has not yet returned to a torrent is explained in part by the kind of backwater which last week became apparent in Wall Street.
Underwriters now are strictly regulated by the Securities & Exchange Commission. To the public this may have meant, as recently claimed by onetime...
