Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/59

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In fact it increases bank deposits which have already been described as potential currency because they give their holders the power to draw cheques or to take out cash from the banks. As was shown in the last chapter, whenever the banks make loans they increase the deposits of themselves and of other banks, and when the Bank of England makes loans it increases the balances of the other banks in its books, and so gives them more "cash at the Bank of England" which is part of the foundation on which they build their fabric of credit. In the same way when the Government borrows from investors, not money that they have saved, but money that they have borrowed from their banks, there is again an increase in potential currency. So that what happens is that instead of the Government's spending power for the war being provided by the reduction of other people's spending power, it is provided by a creation of new spending power. By this process nobody is taxed or bothered to save or make any other sacrifice, but in fact a sacrifice is imposed on the community, and is likely to fall on those least able to bear it. When it taxes a Government can regulate the sacrifice required according to the relative wealth of the taxpayers: when it