A proportion of ten to one between capital and aggregate demand obligations would probably be justified by American experience. The present practice of fixing the surplus fund at twenty per cent of the capital would be justifiable if the capital fund were properly regulated in amount.
(b) Inflation and Means of Protecting the Public against It.—The greatest abuse to which the business of commercial banking is subject, and against which the public most needs protection, is inflation. This is a condition difficult to diagnose, and not well understood by the general public and even by bankers. The most easily recognized symptom of its existence is the forced liquidation of credits; that is, forced sales of property in order to meet maturing obligations to banks. When, for example, the people whose notes or bills have been discounted by banks default in large numbers, and the collateral deposited as security has to be sold, or, in the absence of collateral, the courts must order the sale of their property, the presence of inflation may be suspected.
The chief cause of inflation is the issue by commercial banks of demand obligations against investment securities. The means of liquidating such securities are the profits of the enterprises in which the investments were made and in the nature of the case several years are required for the accomplishment of this end. Meantime the demand obligations of the banks issued against them in the form of balances on checking accounts or notes must be met and, the funds regularly deposited with them as a result of the operation of such enterprises being inadequate, other means must be found. The only one available is the sacrifice, at forced sales, of the property in which the investment was made or of some other property in the possession of the persons responsible to the bank.
The banks usually protect themselves against such forced liquidation by the requirement that the paper they discount shall mature at short intervals, usually not to exceed four to six months, and accept the long-time securities, such as bonds, stocks, and mortgages, only as collateral. By this means they are able to force the liquidation on their customers. Otherwise they would be obliged themselves to endure it, with the result that their capital and surplus funds would be impaired and perhaps exhausted; and, if they should prove inadequate, failure would be inevitable.
The evil involved in the forced sales of property caused by inflation is the readjustment of prices through which it is accomplished, and the depression and, sometimes, panic which follow. When the prices of many kinds of property must be greatly depressed in order to induce their transfer to other hands, the machinery of commerce and industry is thrown out of adjustment and is sometimes rendered temporarily useless. This result is due to the fact that the relations between costs of production and the returns from the sale of finished products are so changed that profits are reduced or annihilated, and many persons are financially ruined. Readjustments of the prices of raw products, labor, and finished goods, and the transfer of plants to new hands, are, therefore, necessary before industry, commerce, and agriculture can again operate in a normal way, and during the period of readjustment some enterprises must entirely stop operations, and all must slow down. At such times many laborers are thrown out of employment, many more work part time only, the wages of nearly all are lowered, and most other classes of income are cut down. Depression and, in extreme cases, panic are the result, and these have serious consequences other than financial.
The means employed for the protection of the public against inflation are crude and inadequate. They may be grouped under the heads: regulations regarding investments, reserves, and note issues. Under the first head belong in the banking legislation of this country limitations on real estate investments and on the amount that may be loaned to a single firm or individual. Our national banking act and most of our state banking acts prohibit banks from holding real estate except for their own accommodation, and as a means of reimbursing themselves for defaulted loans, and our national banking act prohibits the taking of real estate security for loans, and many of our state banking acts limit the amount of such security that may be held. Our national banking act limits the amount that may be loaned to a single firm or individual to one-tenth of the bank's capital and surplus, and similar regulations are common in state banking legislation.
The purpose of these regulations is to confine the investments of banks to what are called liquid securities, but they fail to evince a proper conception on the part of their authors of what really makes a security liquid. Apparently legislators and their advisers have felt that if the securities held by the banks mature in short periods, or are listed on a stock exchange, they are liquid; but such is not necessarily the case.
Commercial paper only is really liquid, since it represents a current commercial process which will soon be completed and the completion of which automatically provides the means for its payment. Such paper usually matures in short periods, but the characteristic of liquidity results not from the date at which it is made to mature, but from the commercial process which called it into existence and will ultimately retire it. In this country very often paper of short maturity is so in form only, its makers expecting to renew it, instead of pay it, at maturity.
Bonds and stocks, even though they may be listed on a stock exchange and daily bought and sold, are not liquid securities in the proper sense of that term. An individual bank may be able to sell them in case of need, but such sale is simply the transfer of the investment to another bank or person, and not its liquidation. The security still exists and must be paid, while its liquidation would take it out of existence.
Foreign legislators have approximated more closely than ours what is needed in the regulation of bank investments. In the case of their central banks, many of them, notably those of France and Germany, have recognized the fundamental distinction between commercial and investment paper, and have required them to hold the former against their demand obligations, especially their notes.