(Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a three-part article.)
Intervention or Private Initiative?
As I argued in my previous post addressing Fung et al.‘s article on Canada’s private banknote currency, the imperfections of that currency appear, on close inspection, far less substantial than Fung et al. suggest. Moreover, what blemishes there were didn’t imply any market failure, or a need for more government regulation, for the simple reason that “imperfect” doesn’t mean “inefficient.” On the contrary: the facts suggest that heavy-handed government interventions aimed at correcting the supposed imperfections more rapidly than bankers’ own efforts might would probably have done Canadians more harm than good.
By making those points, I don’t mean to deny that the various reforms Fung et al. describe, culminating in the Bank Act of 1890, led to some genuine improvements. Yet even if they did, the reforms still don’t imply any market failure, for the simple reason that those reforms appear, for the most part, to have been ones that Canada’s private bankers themselves recommended and implemented, often in anticipation of legislation that enshrined them.
The specific reforms to which Fung et al. refer are:
- The provision of the 1870 Bank Act imposing double liability on banks’ shareholders[1];
- That of the 1880 Act giving note holders a first lien on banks’ assets; and
- Those of the 1890 Act requiring banks to establish note-redemption agencies in “all of Canada’s major commercial centers,” together with a Bank Circulation Fund for the redemption of notes of failed banks, and also to provide for the payment of interest to holders of failed banks’ notes as compensation for any settlement delay.
It’s the importance Fung et al. assign to these reforms, in perfecting Canada’s commercial banknote currency, as well as their belief that the reforms were compulsory, that informs their conclusion that “some intervention by government” will be called for if digital currencies are to be made safe and uniform.
But to what extent were those 19th century reforms truly compulsory, in the sense meaning that they had to be imposed upon Canada’s bankers by government authorities?
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