[From The Archives] Century Partners Barron’s Interview — Part Two

Continued from part one….

Towards the end of 1968, many of the pressures Century Partners noticed during the second half of 1967 began to reappear. Inflation started to rise, putting pressure on costs, bond prices started to look attractive once again and towards the end of 1968, Century’s analysis started to warn of deteriorating levels of corporate liquidity.

“...From 1964 to 1969, the debt-equity ratio of U.S. manufacturing corporations went from 22% to 37%. During the same time, their return on equity declined. This has some rather horrifying implications.”

Century Partners: Getting ahead of themselves

Harpel believed that these figures showed U.S. corporations had lost sight of the fact that economic growth is linked to population growth -- meaning that...