Schragen der Gilden und Aemter der Stadt Riga bis 1621

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 832850500

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-69619

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Schragen der Gilden und Aemter der Stadt Riga bis 1621

Place of publication:: Riga

Publisher:: Häcker

Year of publication:: 1896

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XV, 758 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE FOREIGN EXCHANGES 217 that they signify nothing as regards the advantage secured by one country from its trade with that other country or with all countries. What they do mainly signify is that all those balances are handled by the exchange market as a series of connected items. The buying and selling of exchange by the dealers in the several countries bring it about that a payment due from the United States to Brazil for coffee is easily effected thru bills of exchange on London drawn against American exports of cotton to Great Britain. The dealers in exchange watch the whole financial world, and exert their ingenuity — spurred by remarkably keen competition — toward effecting remittances at the minimum expense. The actual trans- portation of gold is a comparatively dear way of settling the balances. Hence not only are present and future sales of com- modities calculated or guessed at, present and future carrying charges in the way of interest worked out, but the existing and prospective supplies of bills on the several countries against each and every other country are followed with trained eyes. A pres- ent deficiency is met by a subsequent surplus; a debit balance payable to one country is met by a credit balance available against another country. Such is the net effect, in normal times, of the speculative operations of the professional dealers in the foreign exchange markets. A similar smoothing and equalizing ensues from the holding by large banks, and especially by the great public banks, of bills of exchange on foreign countries and especially on gold standard countries. In pre-war days these were most commonly sterling bills; in post-war days they have often been dollar bills. Often they are treated as a “reserve,” and in gold standard countries are often regarded as in effect the same as a gold stock. In whatever way law or custom treats them as reserve, they are in fact simply a means of enabling demands for remittances abroad to be met with- out trenching on actual gold. When deliberately held in consider- able quantities, they serve, even more obviously than the specu- lative operations of the exchange dealers, to prevent the ups and downs of international payments from disturbing the monetary situation. They constitute a reservoir of foreign exchange from

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