Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/174

 Later on when the wind blew on the other cheek and prices were falling like a stone, and buyers were not in battalions or even in single spies, but had vanished from the face of the earth, the price of money was equally irrelevant for a different reason. Producers and merchants had to have it then, because they could not sell their goods and in all countries the buyers who had bought so gaily were repudiating contracts and refusing to take delivery, and an insatiable demand had given way to glutted stagnation. And so those who had goods in hand had to have money whatever it cost, because they simply could not sell them and were forced to carry them on credit. And so Bank Rate and the Treasury Minute, which was supposed to set a limit on the note issue, had no visible effect according to the testimony of available figures, in contracting credit, because credit could not be contracted until the stock of unsaleable goods was gradually worked off.

Professor Pigou's grievance against the banks they were expanding credits for private persons and so defeating the effect of the Government's action in squeezing out part of the credit expansion due to Government borrowing, was one of which the unfortunate bankers, who had so often before been told