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
Jacques Bonhomme in Paris has been selling shiploads of Christmas
kickshaws to John Robinson in London, and so has thousands of English
pounds due to him by the said Robinson. But English pounds, as such, are
not wanted by M. Bonhomme. He wants to sell them, to turn them into
francs, the currency of his own country, with which he makes his daily
payments at home. On the other hand, there are always plenty of
Frenchmen who have imported English goods or have had services rendered
by English bankers, or shipowners, or insurance companies, and so want
to buy English money wherewith to pay their English creditors. So it
follows that the price that M. Bonhomme will get for his English pounds
will depend on the value of goods and services that other Frenchmen have
been selling to England, so producing English pounds to be sold in
Paris, as compared with the value of the claims that have to be met in
London, for the satisfaction of which English pounds have to be bought.
If the amount of English money on offer is bigger than the amount
wanted, down will go the price of the English pound as expressed in
francs, and the seller in francs will get less in francs for his pound.
If the amount of English money wanted is the bigger, the price will go
up, and the seller will get more for his pound. When the price goes
down, the exchange is said to move against London, because there is a
depreciation in the value of the sovereign as expressed in francs. When
it goes up the exchange moves in favour of London, because the buying
power of the sovereign is enhanced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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