International trade

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Problems of verification

Collection:: Economics Books

268 INTERNATIONAL TRADE cin BR 0] loans. French investors had salable foreign securities which they were tempted to sell in masses, putting the proceeds in the domestic rentes. What happened under these circumstances (so fortunate for France) gives hardly any clue to what might happen under conditions such as would ordinarily have to be faced by a country required to pay a great lump-sum indemnity. Nor does it indicate — I may remark in passing — what is likely to happen if a country has to make sudden heavy payments of a non-political character; as, for example, if there be great importa- tions to meet a deficient harvest. Floating securities (if available) are then likely to move quickly in payment of the imports. But great quantities of securities held for permanent investment by thousands of scattered persons would not be easily dislodged. The economist who is searching for illustration or substantiation of his theories is circumvented, so to speak, by the unusual conditions which existed in the French case. He might expect to find the case a very pretty one for his purposes. What would really happen if one country were called on to remit a huge sum to another within the short space of a year or two? Unfortunately, any theoretical analysis he may make of the presumable outcome must remain theoretical. The French experience helps hardly at all for the purposes of verification. And if the case thus affords but slight instruction with regard to transactions of an extraordinary and even catastrophic character, it affords still less for the ordinary operations of international trade. What of the other side of the case? What did Germany get? What was done with the bills of exchange by which the bulk of the payments were made? Here our information is very much less complete; at the same time, some light is thrown on certain more general problems of international payments. As we have seen, the indemnity was received preponderantly in bills of exchange — on England, Belgium, Holland, and so on. What did the German Treasury do with those bills? Did it call for the remittances of specie as they fell due? or sell the bills in Ger- many, leaving it to the purchasers to collect in any way they

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