Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and AdaptedPhillips, Chester Arthur
General
Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and Adapted
Phillips, Chester Arthur
Banks and banking; Banks and banking -- United States; Money
The economy of money through the use of credit substitutes for money
extends really further than the foregoing analysis indicates. Under the
[now superseded] law, three-fifths of the reserves of a rural bank may
be on deposit with banks in reserve cities. Thus against $100,000 of
deposit liability the rural bank needs hold only $6,000 of reserve
money. Against the deposit of the remaining $9,000, the reserve city
bank is required in turn to hold a reserve of only 25 per cent.--$2,250.
And of this required $2,250, one-half may be represented by deposits in
central reserve cities, _e. g._, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis.
Against the $1,125 deposited with it the central reserve bank is
required to hold only 25 per cent. of reserves--$281.25. Thus at the
outside limit of credit extension, $100,000 of deposit currency may be
supported by only $7,406.25 of reserves in money,
(6000 + 1/2 x (9000/4) + (1125/4)).
one dollar of reserves upholding $13 of currency.[34]
It is, of course, not true that the banks ordinarily allow their
reserves to run as low as the legal limit, or make the utmost possible
use of the privilege of counting claims against one another as legal
reserves. Nor is it accurately true that all forms of money are of equal
efficiency in the support of credit. Not all forms of money, but only
those of the higher levels in the money scale, are allowed to be counted
as legal reserves.... Some forms of money make demands upon other forms
for redemption, or are limited in exchange power to the exchange power
of the form in which redemption is to be made. The total exchange
efficiency of the money of a country is, then, not accurately to be
computed on the assumption that all moneys are equally efficient for all
purposes--that some are not in varying degree burdens upon the money
functions of the others.
~Banking Viewed in Detail and in the Aggregate.~--And one further
modification is called for. The analysis so far made, while valid for
any isolated bank, or for the banking system regarded as an aggregate,
is not precisely accurate for the affairs of any one competing bank
among other banks. When the check drawn by the borrowing depositor may
be deposited in other banks and collected by them against the lending
bank, its granting of credits rapidly draws down its reserves to swell
the reserves of its competitors. One hundred thousand dollars of new
reserves may not mean to it an increase of lending power of more than,
say, $125,000. For banks in the aggregate, however, this increase of
reserves brings its full several-fold increase of lending power,
provided that all the reserve efficiency is utilized in whatever bank it
rests. As the lending by each bank is depleting its reserves, the
lending which other banks are doing is reinforcing these reserves. The
aggregate possible extension of credit is not changed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account