Full circle from 1694?
Discussion
An interesting lesson from history... from 'The Narrow Seas, a history of the English Channel' by Reginald Hargreaves:
'Retrenchment on the Fighting Services is always popular in England, but beyond this one reduction in expenditure ecomomy halted; the huge National Debt being funded, so that its increasing burden could be passed on to posterity to deal with as best it might. By-product of this excercise in financial skulduggery was the foundation of the Bank of England. As a poem of the time goes:
[i]Blest paper credit, last and best supply
That lends curruption lighter wings to fly.[/i]
One consequence of the prevailing heavy scale of taxaion and the mood of financial irresponsibility it induced, was a growing craze for lotteries and for highly speculative investments, whose commercial soundness was in inverse ratio to the extravagant promises of high profits and quick returns dangled before the dazzled eyes of the greedy and the credulous.'
So it seems the Bank of England was founded to blank out the National Debt by issuing credit (paper money) - and that credit has been building up ever since. Maybe soon it will all go pop and we'll return to the more straightforward models of the 17th century?
'Retrenchment on the Fighting Services is always popular in England, but beyond this one reduction in expenditure ecomomy halted; the huge National Debt being funded, so that its increasing burden could be passed on to posterity to deal with as best it might. By-product of this excercise in financial skulduggery was the foundation of the Bank of England. As a poem of the time goes:
[i]Blest paper credit, last and best supply
That lends curruption lighter wings to fly.[/i]
One consequence of the prevailing heavy scale of taxaion and the mood of financial irresponsibility it induced, was a growing craze for lotteries and for highly speculative investments, whose commercial soundness was in inverse ratio to the extravagant promises of high profits and quick returns dangled before the dazzled eyes of the greedy and the credulous.'
So it seems the Bank of England was founded to blank out the National Debt by issuing credit (paper money) - and that credit has been building up ever since. Maybe soon it will all go pop and we'll return to the more straightforward models of the 17th century?
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