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Writing: A Remedy for the Country

A Remedy for the Country, § 12

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§ 12

In view of this, it was not surprising that the Bank’s promissory notes, despite all decrees and ordinances, came to have a fluctuating value, namely that which those who had commodities or bills of exchange to sell were prepared to set on them, to which the incredible number of banknotes that came into circulation within our country in that way also contributed all too much, for which I may well cite the remark of the late Board of Trade Counsellor Polhem: “Where pearls are gathered by the shovelful, they cannot possibly be of the same value as when they are set in jewelry and necklaces.”

There are thus generally three causes of the debasement of the daler or the rise in the relative value of the mark against the riksdaler: first, our own monetary regulations; second, the measures adopted by the three respective Estates with regard to the Bank through their Secret Committee, banking committees and directors; and third, the speculation of merchants, in that they have either secured such regulations or at least made use of them to their own advantage, which, even if ten have avoided doing, the eleventh has nonetheless infallibly done, and if the first two of these causes are done away with, the third will lapse of itself. With regard to which, one should really not apportion all blame to exporters and issuers of bills of exchange.

Matters were arranged in such a way that the outcome would be that which we are now experiencing.

All this caused the daler denomination printed on the banknote not to have any defined value against the current coin, and this uncertainty in turn caused the current coin not to coexist easily in circulation with the paper currency, which made the value of the latter all the more unstable.

The paper daler, or the daler denomination shown on the banknotes, has thus fallen from 1/9 to 1/27 of a riksdaler, or, which amounts to the same: when someone has required cash payment for his commodity or a buyer ready money with which to order some commodities, he has been obliged to pay from 36 to 108 paper mark for a riksdaler, or from 9 to 27 daler, and as the riksdaler is now worth exactly the same as it has been for the past 30 or 40 years, it is clear that the paper daler and mark have been devalued by two-thirds, during which time commodity prices in daler kmt have risen to the same extent. And although the riksdaler has now fallen again to 70 mark or slightly above that, owing to the withdrawal of the circulating notes and other reasons, the commodity prices have not yet had time to adjust themselves to that but in the meantime cause complaints and distress in all economic pursuits and enterprises.

 

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