The Essential Elements Of A Monetary System Address Before The Worlds Congress Of Bankers And Financiers Chicago June 1893

Author : Horace White
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780666583024
Total Pages : 20 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (83 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book An Elastic Currency; George Smith's Money in the Early Northwest: An Address to the American Bankers' Association at Chicago, October 19, 1893 (Classi written by Horace White and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from An Elastic Currency; "George Smith's Money" In the Early Northwest: An Address to the American Bankers' Association at Chicago, October 19, 1893 Nearly everybody who busies himself with the subject of finance says that we ought to have an elastic currency. What is meant by that? Evidently it means a currency that will expand when there is an active demand for it and contract when the demand subsides. This suggests another query: What do we mean by demand P The demand for money is nearly universal. It is as great among the loafers around the City Hall as among the brokers on the Stock Exchange, but when we speak of the demand for money we do not mean the demand of either beggars or speculators. We mean the demand for money to carry on the exchange of the products of the country, which move at certain periods and years in larger volume than at other periods and years. We all agree that the currency ought to be elastic in the sense of being more abundant when the exchanges of goods are rapid and extensive, and less abundant when the contrary condition exists. How can we get this kind of a currency? We cannot get it from the Government, because the Government cannot know when the demand for money is increasing and when it is diminishing. The Government has no commercial barometer. All of its machinery is political. The loafers around the City Hall have the same access to its ear as the merchants and the manufacturers. Tammany Hall has a stronger pull on it than the Produce Exchange. The advocates of a currency issued by the Government tacitly acknowledge these facts when they go in for a per capita currency. They have no measure for the needs of the community except a count of heads. They would not, however, apply this rule to the tribes of Central Africa. Why not? Because the business of Central Africa is not like our business. So it appears that the kind of business should be taken account of as well as the number of people. That is all that we contend for. The Government has an infallible test for the numbers of the people, because it can take the census. But it has no test whatever for the state of business, except such inferences as may be drawn from the collection of taxes. I believe it has never been proposed to gauge the issuing of currency by the collections at the Custom House, but that method would be much more philosophical than the per capita method. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.