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
In a natural state of banking, that in which all the principal banks
kept their own reserve, this demand of the bill-brokers and other
dependent dealers would be one of the principal calls on that
reserve. At every period of incipient panic the holders of it would
perceive that it was of great importance to themselves to support
these dependent dealers. If the panic destroyed those dealers it
would grow by what it fed upon (as is its nature), and might
probably destroy also the bankers, the holders of the reserve. The
public terror at such times is indiscriminate. When one house of
good credit has perished, other houses of equal credit though of
different nature are in danger of perishing. The many holders of the
banking reserve would under the natural system of banking be obliged
to advance out of that reserve to uphold bill-brokers and similar
dealers. It would be essential to their own preservation not to let
such dealers fail, and the protection of such dealers would
therefore be reckoned among the necessary purposes for which they
retained that reserve.
Nor probably would the demands on the bill-brokers in such a system
of banking be exceedingly formidable. Considerable sums would no
doubt be drawn from them, but there would be no special reason why
money should be demanded from them more than from any other money
dealers. They would share the panic with the bankers who kept the
reserve, but they would not feel it more than the bankers. In each
crisis the set of the storm would be determined by the cause which
had excited it, but there would not be anything in the nature of
bill-broking to attract the advance of the alarm peculiarly to them.
They would not be more likely to suffer than other persons; the only
difference would be that when they did suffer, having no adequate
reserve of their own, they would be obliged to ask the aid of
others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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