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Writing: A Remedy for the Country

A Remedy for the Country, § 19

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§ 191

In spite of all this, let us nonetheless for a moment accept the matter as feasible and briefly consider its implementation. There we may perhaps discover new evidence.

The honourable Estates of the Realm have brought to light how many thousand skeppund of plåtar, how many riksdaler, caroliner, dukater, and so forth have been withdrawn from the Bank, and how liberal the management of the Bank has been in other respects has also recently been publicized in print. Money has not dropped into the Bank from the sky, so it must belong to the subjects, and the funds of the Bank have inevitably been diminished to an incredible extent thereby. As the value of the paper money depends on the amount of assets that the Bank is willing to exchange for it, and as the Bank is nowadays unwilling to consider a conversion rate of 70 mark, or 17½ daler kmt, per riksdaler, how strange must it not seem when it is said that banknotes will in a few years’ time be converted at 36 mark, or that the Bank for every 9-daler banknote will then give the possessor of the note one riksdaler specie or a 9-daler plåt.

To my simple mind it seems that even if the Bank expected such a large income during these years by which it would be able to convert all banknotes at a rate of 36 mark, it would seem necessary, not least of all out of concern for the resources of the Bank when an annually falling conversion rate is being established, that it should redeem most of its notes now, at least from those who wish to remit bills of exchange, and do not receive the stipulated rate on the Stock Exchange, which would also, among other things, be the only way of implementing the royal ordinance that has been issued on this matter.

But to plan a conversion rate 100 per cent higher than the actual present value of the banknotes to which all economic enterprises have already adapted themselves, and to do so at a time when the resources of the Bank cannot sustain such a move, holding the Bank to its word appears to be such an audacious step that it could potentially endanger the capital of both the Bank and the realm itself and be a much too generous promise to the banknote capitalists.

Finally, in my view, there is an impracticality in the fact that such a plan of operation extends over such a long period of time, during which the inconvenience it causes may dissatisfy all producers, and thus the majority of people in the country, and there can hardly be any power that can guarantee its survival in the future, whereby all the effort invested in it could be wasted.


  1. § 18 is missing, owing to a mistake in the original numbering.

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