THE PAST 
7 
from some convulsion that has made normal financ 
ing impossible, the certificate of indebtedness is now 
being used as a recurrent device for effecting short 
time borrowing from the banks and to some extent 
from investors in anticipation of the proceeds of 
loans and taxes, being thereafter funded into or 
extinguished out of the proceeds of such loans and 
taxes. 
But withal, there are incidents in our earlier use 
of short-term obligations that offer instruction in 
the present juncture. We are still far from the 
time wherein it will be possible to estimate inde 
pendently the full effect of our present fiscal policy. 
Until then the procedure actually adopted by the 
Treasury in this particular can profitably be ex 
amined with regard to what has heretofore tran 
spired, even though present conditions and require 
ments are very different. 
The use of the term “ treasury certificate of in 
debtedness ”— in preference to “ treasury note,” 
“ treasury bill,” “ bill of credit,” “ United States 
note”—to designate an instrument of short-term 
borrowing is a matter of statutory designation and 
administrative practice rather than of judicial pre 
cision or text-book definition. 4 With regard to 
fiscal service and economic effect as well as to actual 
employment in the financial experience of the 
* Even in the present financing the terms “certificate of in 
debtedness,” “ treasury certificate of indebtedness,” and 
“ United States certificate of indebtedness ” have been used 
more or less indiscriminately in the administrative texts. On 
the whole “ ‘ treasury certificate of indebtedness ’ is probably 
the term most commonly used by the treasury officials ”— and 
there has been increasing disposition to formalize this term.