Currency And Banking | by Bonamy Price
This work is founded on the view of Currency and Banking taken in the Lectures on the Principles of Currency, delivered at Oxford, and published in 1869, and also in other writings. I have met with no reason which, in my opinion, requires that the views therein expressed should be altered.
Title | Currency And Banking |
Author | Bonamy Price |
Publisher | Appleton |
Year | 1876 |
Copyright | 1876, Appleton |
Amazon | Currency And Banking |
By Bonamy Price,. Professor Of Political Economy In The University Of Oxford
- Chapter I. Metallic Currency
- To commence an investigation of the principles of currency is to enter a region which may be justly described as chaos. The very sound of the word currency makes a man turn his back or shut his ears; ...
- Metallic Currency. Part 2
- The question immediately arises: Why do civilized nations buy this costly metal? Property is given away for it at all hours: what has led to such a practice? It is easy to understand the pursuit of fo...
- Metallic Currency. Part 3
- 2. But what is the foundation of this voluntary agreement to take money? A seller cannot part with his property in exchange for money which is useless to him unless it furnishes him with a guarantee t...
- Metallic Currency. Part 4
- 4. Although any commodity, in principle, may serve as the tool of exchange, practically, every nation that could obtain the precious metals has employed them as money. They had excellent reasons for t...
- Metallic Currency. Part 5
- It is very important to bear in mind that money does not determine value; money only expresses it. Value is determined by each man's personal feeling. The maker or owner, on the one side- and the moti...
- Metallic Currency. Part 6
- The inquiry, how is one to discover how much buying and selling and paying of debts is going on in England, so as to learn how many sovereigns are needed, is answered in the same way as the parallel q...
- Metallic Currency. Part 7
- Gold exercises a most valuable function in liquidating the balances of international trade. All trade, as between individuals so between nations, is an exchange of property, of wealth, of goods. Every...
- Metallic Currency. Part 8
- It remains to say a few words on a double standard. In some countries a gold or a silver coin is a legal tender for the payment of debts. The expression legal tender arises only on the payment of a co...
- Chapter II. Paper Currency
- Section I. - Convertible Bank-Notes. We have now ascertained the nature and principles of a metallic currency; we proceed to paper currency, and we shall find the same general principles to prevail...
- Paper Currency. Part 2
- Nevertheless, though bank-notes are not money, it is hopeless to try to strip them of that title. When the bank-notes are established in public confidence, it is impossible to maintain the distinction...
- Paper Currency. Part 3
- But there is a very solid and serious distinction between a private issuer of notes and a Government. The property given to a solvent banker for his notes is not lost to the nation; the banker lends i...
- Paper Currency. Part 4
- But a Government may employ indirect agency and demand a share in the profit of a function which no one can distinctly claim as his own, and which naturally falls to the State as supreme over all publ...
- Paper Currency. Part 5
- And now we reach the very critical question - In what numbers will convertible bank-notes circulate? It is the crucial question to test the soundness of every theory of currency. All who talk and writ...
- Paper Currency. Part 6
- We are next told that a contracted circulation raises prices; upon what evidence or principle does this favourite dogma rest? Bank-notes really convertible are identical in value with gold; the slight...
- Section II - The Bank Charter Act of 1844
- This seems to be the fitting place for explaining the manner in which bank-notes are issued in England, more especially under the Statute of 1844, which re-organised the issues of the Bank of England,...
- Section II - The Bank Charter Act of 1844. Part 2
- Many suppose that the debt of fourteen millions due by the Government to the Bank - which we may presume was the reason why the line between the uncovered and the covered issues was drawn at fourteen ...
- Section II - The Bank Charter Act of 1844. Part 3
- Is, then, the figure fifteen millions the proper one, or is it too low?. This is an issue of fact, and facts will supply the answer. On three several occasions, in 1847, 1857, and 1866, the Act was su...
- Section II - The Bank Charter Act of 1844. Part 4
- One point more remains to be noticed. Of what denomination ought notes to be? Much opposition is directed in England against small notes, but it has its roots in prejudice and not in science. The size...
- Section III. - Inconvertible Bank-Notes
- We have now reached the region where theory revels in all its forms: inconvertible bank-notes. Great Governments seize with avidity upon this form of currency as the means of reaping gain at the expen...
- Section III. - Inconvertible Bank-Notes. Part 2
- And it is no small part of the calamity and disgrace of an inconvertible currency that it leads to large and incessant violation of contracts. Every stipulated sum which has to be paid with such notes...
- Section III. - Inconvertible Bank-Notes. Part 3
- But another mischief is exceedingly apt to be developed under an inconvertible paper currency. When banks are employed as the instruments of its issue, experience overwhelmingly shows that good bankin...
- Section III. - Inconvertible Bank-Notes. Part 4
- Resumption would probably follow the same course in the United States. The important point is to establish a thorough conviction in the minds of the whole people that the return to specie payment is i...
- Chapter III. What Is A Bank?
- We have now finished the discussion of currency in its strict and technical sense. We pass on to another agency for carrying on the great work of exchanging wealth, for exchanging goods made to be con...
- What Is A Bank? Part 2
- Here arises the question: In what form does the banker obtain payment of these pieces of paper for his customers? If his bank is in the City of London, he will not touch a single pound of money in the...
- What Is A Bank? Part 3
- This process, of course, implies that the man who deposits the debts to collect does not himself buy as much as he has sold, for in that case the banker would have nothing to lend. The counter-cheques...
- What Is A Bank? Part 4
- The banker is a broker between two principals, but he differs in one important detail from an ordinary broker. In Mincing Lane the broker finds a buyer for the tea merchant; there his action ends. He ...
- What Is A Bank? Part 5
- The important matter for a banker to study is not the movements up or down of his reserve, regarded as isolated facts, but the forces which are acting on that reserve, if he desires to learn the prese...
- What Is A Bank? Part 6
- But this is not the view taken by the City, and those who speak on banking. They set up a different theory, if that can be called theory which is composed of affirmation only; they hold that the amoun...
- What Is A Bank? Part 7
- That the power of the Bank to lend need not be crippled by regard for the amount of its reserve was strikingly illustrated by the events of the terrible year, 1866. On May 9 the Bank had a reserve of ...
- What Is A Bank? Part 8
- But these principals of the banking community comprise the whole nation; changes, therefore, which befall the nation act directly on banking. The habits of a population may vary much from year to year...
- What Is A Bank? Part 9
- 2. In the next place, it is plain that on the side of their receipts bankers are passive; in respect of their advances, the causes which act on banks are mainly of their own making. Deposits are deter...
- What Is A Bank? Part 10
- So it was in the great American crisis of 1873. Railways had been commenced in the wilds, far beyond the spare capital of the nation to complete. The very process of consuming the capital expended on ...
- What Is A Bank? Part 11
- There is prostration of trading strength. Labourers are thrown out of employment, wages fall, new works are not commenced, or are at a stand-still. Mr Brassey, in his interesting book on Work and Wag...
- What Is A Bank? Part 12
- But what is to be done when a crisis is on? How is it to be alleviated? The settlement of losses cannot be avoided; they have been incurred, and they must be endured by those upon whom they necessaril...
- What Is A Bank? Part 13
- These same facts abundantly prove that gold is not the instrument with which panics are healed, and that no argument can be derived even from the time of great alarm for the maintenance of a huge rese...
- What Is A Bank? Part 14
- And if the taking out of the gold for exports proceeded still further, and the requirements of this trade in corn absolutely required an additional supply, what so easy or so unobjectionable as that t...
- What Is A Bank? Part 15
- If the cart only is thought of and not the goods contained in it, people must not be surprised if every kind of charge is made for cartage. What is happening to the two principals of every banker, whe...
- What Is A Bank? Part 16
- The renewal of the order to the Secretary of the Treasury to re - commence the contraction of the legal tender issues, which had been regularly begun and then was arrested, is the most obvious and, it...
- Appendix
- It seems desirable to add the following remarks to Chapter I (Metallic Currency).: A. This option of the debtor to select that currency whose metallic value is overrated by the law of legal tender ...
- Money and the Mechanism of Exchange
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- Weights, Measures, and Money, of All Nations
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