Page:Lombard Street (1917).djvu/323

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295
PRINCIPLES REGULATING RESERVE

liabilities are £2,000,000, and that as a rule he finds it necessary to keep at the Bank one-tenth of these liabilities,or £200,000, the payment of 100,000 would reduce his reserve to £100,000; but his liabilities would be still £1,900,000, and therefore to keep up his tenth he would have £90,000 to find. His process for finding it is this: he calls in, say, a loan to the bill brokers; and if no equal additional money is contemporaneously carried to these brokers (which in the case of a large withdrawal of foreign money is not probable), they must reduce their business and discount less. But the effect of this is to throw additional business on the Bank of England. They hold the ultimate reserve of the country, and they must discount out of it if no one else will: if they declined to do so there would be panic and collapse. As soon, therefore, as the withdrawal of the German money reduces the bankers' balances, there is a new demand on the Bank for fresh discounts to make up those balances. The drain on the Bank is two-fold: first, the banking reserve is reduced by exportation of the German money, which reduces the means of the Bank of England; and then out of those reduced means the Bank of England has to make greater advances.

The same result may be arrived at more easily. Supposing any foreign Government or person to have any sort of securities which he can pledge in