Читать книгу Readings in Money and Banking - Chester Arthur Phillips - Страница 92

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[36] … a bank must so regulate its loans and note issues as to keep on hand a sufficient cash reserve, and thus prevent insufficiency of cash from … threatening. It can regulate the reserve by alternately selling securities for cash and loaning cash on securities. The more the loans in proportion to the cash on hand, the greater the profits, but the greater the danger also. In the long run a bank maintains its necessary reserve by means of adjusting the interest rate charged for loans. If it has few loans and a reserve large enough to support loans of much greater volume, it will endeavor to extend its loans by lowering the rate of interest. If its loans are large and it fears too great demands on the reserve, it will restrict the loans by a high interest charge. Thus, by alternately raising and lowering interest, a bank keeps its loans within the sum which the reserve can support, but endeavors to keep them (for the sake of profit) as high as the reserve will support.

If the sums owed to individual depositors are large, relatively to the total liabilities, the reserve should be proportionately large, since the action of a small number of depositors can deplete it rapidly. Similarly, the reserves should be larger against fluctuating deposits (as of stock brokers) or those known to be temporary. The reserve in a large city of great bank activity needs to be greater in proportion to its demand liabilities than in a small town with infrequent banking transactions.

Experience dictates differently the average size of deposit accounts for different banks according to the general character and amount of their business. For every bank there is a normal ratio and hence for a whole community there is also a normal ratio—an average of the ratios for the different banks. No absolute numerical rule can be given. Arbitrary rules are often imposed by law. National banks in the United States, for instance, are required to keep a reserve for their deposits, varying according as they are or are not situated in certain cities designated by law as "reserve" cities, i.e., cities where national banks hold deposits of banks elsewhere. These reserves are all in defense of deposits. In defense of notes, on the other hand, no cash reserve is required—that is, of national banks. True, the same economic principles apply to both bank notes and deposits, but the law treats them differently. The Government itself chooses to undertake to redeem the national bank notes on demand.

The state banks are subject to varying restrictions. Thus the requirement as to the ratio of reserve to deposits varies from 12–½ per cent. to 22–½ per cent., being usually between 15 per cent. and 20 per cent. Of the reserve, the part which must be cash varies from 10 per cent. (of the reserve) to 50 per cent., usually 40 per cent.

Such legal regulation of banking reserves, however, is not a necessary development of banking. …