Essays of Benjamin Franklin

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1752429486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-127700

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Franklin, Benjamin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118534912

Title:: Essays of Benjamin Franklin

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: xi, 273 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: XX. Comparison of Great Britain and the United States in regard to the basis of credit in the two countries

Collection:: Economics Books

NORMAL EXCHANGES 27 effects this adaptation with greater elasticity than any other form of regulation. For this reason the phenomenon of the exchange has seemed to many people to be a manifes- tation of some spontaneous force making for equilibrium which is in some sort natural and on the whole beneficent. We have seen above how far this opinion rests on a study of the facts. But it has also not escaped us that in a market in which the exchange fluctuates without limit and is subject to all the impulses of speculators, iz is very far [from being governed solely by economic factors and in particular by the balance of accounts, and we have noted the serious dis- turbances which may be caused by exchange fluctuations ending in unlimited depreciation. A respect for the “natural” forces which create economic phenomena should not therefore go so far as to make us con- sider as necessary those irregular fluctuations of the ex- change which occur where there is no common monetary basis with the other countries. It would indeed be strange if the system of stable exchanges which existed before the war, namely, of exchanges restricted within the limits of the gold points, should nowadays cease to be considered as normal. Moreover, surely it would be “natural” in a world in which transactions are carried out between all countries, however far distant from each other, that settlements should take place on a monetary basis common to all countries. It would therefore seem that if there were substituted for national currencies a single currency for the whole world and if therefore the entire volume of currency available in every country were international in character, the problem of the exchange would no longer arise; even if this method of clear- ing still continued to exist between certain markets, the extreme rates would be limited by the cost of a registered letter. Thus, for instance, in the absence of a gold circula- tion sufficient to form a single universal currency, it is easy to imagine the existence of a single fiduciary currency issued by an international organ. It will be seen after re- ferring to the chapter devoted to the study of the idea of currency and of a monetary standard that an international fiduciary currency issued limited in quantity would 2C

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