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.