Lombard Street: A Description of the Money MarketBagehot, Walter
History
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Bagehot, Walter
Banks and banking -- England -- London; Banks and banking -- Great Britain; Finance -- England -- London; Finance -- Great Britain
The old practice of bill-broking, which Mr. Richardson describes,
also still exists. There are many brokers to be seen about Lombard
Street with bills which they wish to discount but which they do not
guarantee. They have sometimes discounted these bills with their own
capital, and if they can re-discount them at a slightly lower rate
they gain a difference which at first seems but trifling, but with
which they are quite content, because this system of lending first
and borrowing again immediately enables them to turn their capital
very frequently, and on a few thousand pounds of capital to discount
hundreds of thousands of bills; as the transactions are so many,
they can be content with a smaller profit on each. In other cases,
these non-guaranteeing brokers are only agents who are seeking money
for bills which they have undertaken to get discounted. But in
either case, as far as the banker or other ultimate capitalist is
concerned, the transaction is essentially that which Mr. Richardson
describes. The loan by such banker is a re-discount of the bill; that
banker cannot obtain repayment of that loan, except by the payment
of the bill at maturity. He has no claim upon the agent who brought
him the bill. Bill-broking, in this which we may call its archaic
form, is simply one of the modes in which bankers obtain bills which
are acceptable to them and which they re-discount. No reference is
made in it to the credit of the bill-broker; the bills being
discounted 'without recourse' to him are as good if taken from a
pauper as if taken from a millionaire. The lender exercises his own
judgment on the goodness of the bill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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