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 process is exactly the same, and is even more simple and easy to
understand when we take away the complication of the exchange of the
moneys of two different nations, and look at it at work between two
distant towns of the same country. If in the course of trade New York
has large payments to make in Chicago, money in Chicago will be wanted
in New York, and competition there will send up the price of it, so that
a dollar in Chicago will be worth more for the time being to New Yorkers
than a dollar in New York, and any New York bank or firm that has a
balance or a credit in Chicago will be able to dispose of it at a
premium. The extent of this premium, however, will obviously be limited
by the expense involved in sending lawful money, as the Americans call
it, from New York to Chicago. If we suppose, for the sake of simplicity,
that the cost of sending a dollar and insuring it is covered by a cent,
no one in New York will pay much more than one dollar and a cent for a
dollar in Chicago. Rather than do so he will send his dollar. He will
probably pay a small fraction more to save himself the trouble and time
involved by sending and insuring money, and this minute fraction that he
will sacrifice is the opportunity of the exchange dealer, who will send
money to Chicago, and put himself in funds there, and so be able to
supply money in Chicago to any one in New York who will pay for it at
the rate of one dollar and one cent plus any profit that the exchange
dealer can squeeze out of him.
Viewed in this simple example the problem of exchange has few terrors.
It is merely a question of the price of money in one place, as expressed
in the same money in another, with fluctuations governed by supply and
demand and limited by the cost of sending money from place to place.
This limitation does not mean that supply and demand cease to govern the
market, but merely that at a point supply can be increased to meet any
demand by the despatch of currency.
"FAVOURABLE" AND "UNFAVOURABLE" EXCHANGES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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