[Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market by Walter Bagehot]@TWC D-Link book
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market

CHAPTER V
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In this way, therefore, any artificial reduction in the value of money causes a new augmentation of the demand for money, and thus restores that value to its natural level.

In all business this is well known by experience: a stimulated market soon becomes a tight market, for so sanguine are enterprising men, that as soon as they get any unusual ease they always fancy that the relaxation is greater than it is, and speculate till they want more than they can obtain.
In these two ways sudden loans by an issuer of notes, though they may temporarily lower the value of money, do not lower it permanently, because they generate their own counteraction.

And this they do whether the notes issued are convertible into coin or not.
During the period of Bank restriction, from 1797 to 1819, the Bank of England could not absolutely control the Money Market, any more than it could after 1819, when it was compelled to pay its notes in coin.

But in the case of convertible notes there is a third effect, which works in the same direction, and works more quickly.

A rise of prices, confined to one country, tends to increase imports, because other countries can obtain more for their goods if they send them there, and it discourages exports, because a merchant who would have gained a profit before the rise by buying here to sell again will not gain so much, if any, profit after that rise.


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