The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
Whenever a retail store has branches, duplications are likely to occur.
"Chain stores" make great overcounting. "Kiting" swells bank deposits.
Replying to these contentions, Professor Fisher has urged that there is
large _undercounting_, also, and that the undercounting balances the
overcounting. I have myself called attention to a good deal of
undercounting in the chapter on "Barter." A substantial amount of
ordinary trade is carried on by means of partially offsetting
book-credit, time bills of exchange, simple barter, etc. The amount
might even run high, as compared with ordinary trade, when the clearing
arrangements in the stock and produce exchanges are taken into account.
But it is impossible to figure out anything at all in this line which is
to be compared with the great gap between the 141 billions of trade we
were able to find,[429] and the 387 billions Professor Fisher assigns to
trade. The gap of over 245 billions is much too great. Besides, in our
141 billions, we have counted barter items, book-credit items, time-bill
of exchange items, etc., already.
The main item of undercounting must be in connection with the clearing
arrangements in the speculative exchanges. This would seem to be
Professor Fisher's view, as well.[430] Data are at hand for the two
great exchanges of the country which enable us to measure, with some
precision, the amount of the undercounting--_i. e._, to tell the extent
to which checks are dispensed with in the trading of these two great
exchanges. The two exchanges are the Chicago Board of Trade and the New
York Stock Exchange.
For the New York Stock Exchange, figures are taken from Pratt's _Work of
Wall Street_, 1912 ed., pp. 166-167, 180, 273. The figures are for the
big year, 1901, when 266 million shares were sold, more than in 1909 by
51 millions of shares, and when the Stock Exchange Clearing House should
have done better, in the magnitude of the undercounting, than it did in
1909. Figures since 1901 are, Pratt states,[431] not available. Pratt
also gives figures for 1893, but does not give data as to the percentage
of stocks handled by the Clearing House, so that comparison with the
1901 figures cannot be made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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