Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/154

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money which earned the higher rate as foreign, really was so. In peace there was no such safeguard, and in any case the differential rate is not wanted in peace time. It was less wanted than ever in the after-war period, since the movements of credits to and from this country was then largely regulated by movements in exchange which were already sufficiently erratic and violent to make the question of the rate earned by sums left here an almost negligible item in the consideration of those who controlled them.

Attention has already been called to the change in the working of our Money Market that had been produced by the enormous total of the floating debt created during the war. The existence at the end of the war of over a thousand million of Treasury Bills outstanding, of which between £300,000,000 and £400,000,000 were probably in the hands of the banks and other professional dealers in credit, clearly made it difficult for the Bank of England to secure real control of the monetary position. If these professional holders of Treasury Bills took it into their heads to want more credit, at a time when the bank wanted them to have less, they had only to present them day by day for payment instead of renewing them on maturity and they could compel the Govern-