The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
For the United States, from 1890 to 1911, taking yearly averages, we
have a variation in the ratio of reserves to deposits of over 73% of the
minimum ratio. The ratio was 26% in 1894, and 15% in 1906. "The
juxtaposition of these extreme variations shows how inaccurate is the
assumption that the deposit currency may be treated as a substantially
constant multiple of the quantity of money in banks."[167] For New York
City, the annual average percentage of reserves of Clearing House banks
to net deposits varies from 24.89% in 1907 to 37.59% in 1894.[168] The
extreme variations[169] in weekly averages are (for the sixteen years,
1885-1900) 20.6% in August, 1893 and 45.2% in February, 1894. These
figures are extreme, since the number of occurrences is small for them,
but there are numerous occurrences of deviations from the mean as wide
apart as 24% and 42%.[170] The yearly fluctuation in all these ratios is
very great.
The ratio of money held by the banks and money held by the people also
shows wide variation, and considerable yearly fluctuation. There is a
further complication, for the United States, of varying proportions of
the total monetary stock held by the Federal Treasury. As between the
banks and the public, the banks held about a third in 1893 (average for
the year), and nearly half in 1911.[171] Whatever may be the relations
between money in the hands of the people, money in banks, and volume of
deposits, in "the static state," there is no statistical evidence
whatever to justify the notion of fixed relations among them in real
life.[172] We shall later show that there can be no static laws whatever
governing the relations of credit and reserves.[173]
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