THE EVENT

The Event referred to took place in England in the year 1694 with the birth of the Bank of England as the national Bank. The Bank of England was not the first national bank. Two other national banks were created before the Bank of England. The first national bank was the Banco de Spiritus Sanctus or the Bank of the Holy Spirit (amazing name!) which became the first national Bank in 1605 of, which State? None other than the Vatican. The Bank, founded by Pope Paul V, has ceased to perform financial miracles for the Popes -now it is in the hands of the Italian State- but the Vatican possesses its own official bank, piously called the Institute for Religious Works. The second was the Bank of Sweden (Sveriges Riksbank) founded in 1668. The reason why we have chosen the Bank of England as the birth of the State is because only England with the beheading of their King and the creation of the Parliament had the right social chemistry to trigger the unprecedented unfolding of this institution, the State. Only in England, and for the first time, the debt of the Sovereign had the conditions to become what became known as the National Debt. A concept whereby the debt incurred by the Sovereign, no longer belongs to him, but to the entire nation.

This does not mean that in the year 1694, the State, with all the features with which we know today, suddenly appeared. No, the State gradually developed into its full flesh in the years to come. What took place in this year, was the coming together of two institutions banking and government in a new fashion which created the necessary mixture for the unfolding of the State. We can say that the seed of the State was created. This seed contained the potential for all the features that were to unfold in the years to come. The seed contained the forerunner elements of the Central Bank, fiat money and the national debt. How did it happen? And what happened?

The Revolution over, and the Dutch William of Orange on the throne of England (1689-1702) a climate of discovery and experimentation with money matters was flourishing in England. It was a time of treasure hunting companies, “quick money making” schemes and new banking designs. It was all further encouraged by the small boom of 1692-5. In this climate the Bank of England was born.

At the time England was financially exhausted after half a century of war. Unable to increase taxes and unable to borrow, Parliament became desperate for some other way to obtain money. There were two groups of men who saw a unique opportunity arise out of this necessity. The first group consisted of the political scientists within the government. The second was comprised of the monetary scientists from the emerging business of banking.

The opportunity came in 1694, when the King needed money to raise an army for the war with France. The King went to the rich merchants and goldsmith bankers in London to acquire this money. Several schemes for a public bank were submitted. Finally, William Paterson, a Scotsman, fronted several syndicates and made a proposal in imitation of similar successful ventures in Italy and the Netherlands (especially the Bank of Amsterdam founded in 1609 -seen by many as the father of modern banking). After a few failed attempts, he and his merchant backers eventually proved successful.

Patterson wrote a brief presentation for the initial stock offering entitled “Brief Account of the Intended Bank of England” [quoted by Prof. Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University, in "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time", 1966], in which he wrote: “the bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” This simple sentence, by the world’s first Central Banker, was going to become the key issue to the unfolding monetary destiny of the world for the next three hundred years.

The meaning of the sentence is that “under the government’s authority” the Bank of England would issue paper money created “out of nothing”, which would in turn be loaned at interest to various borrowers. The commercial banks had done this before, but this time it was endorsed by the “authority of the people”, the Parliament. The meaning of “out of nothing” is that the notes of the Bank of England were only partially backed by gold or silver, not to the point of complete convertibility. From the very beginning the Bank never professed to make its issues of notes square exactly with its coin and bullion, though, of course, it made its liabilities square with its assets. This issue has remained a mystery for most people even today. How can the liabilities be equal to the assets, and yet there are more notes than specie? The issue is at the heart of banking itself, but we leave this issue of “magical” accounting for another occasion, we will simply refer to it as fractional reserve banking, meaning, the ability of the bank to lend more than what it holds in cash or creating money “out of nothing”.

By early May 1694 the parliament passed a statute appointing a new tax on ship tonnage expected to raise £140,000 per year. £100,000 of this was earmarked to pay interest (at 8% per annum) on a new £1.2 million loan which the government was going to borrow from the Bank. The loan would “only” cover about ¼ of that year’s expenditures upon the Nine Years War (1689-97) with France.

The £1.2 million loan was paid into the Exchequer in instalments between August and December. Shareholders received interest of 8% on the full amount of the loan, although they had “only” had to contribute £720,000 in actual cash, the rest had been created “out of nothing”. The loan was paid to the government with the cash of the shareholders, who by November had supplied 60% of the amounts for which they had subscribed. The rest was paid with so-called “sealed bills”: £1000 paper notes stamped with the Bank’s corporate seal. The government used these bills in turn to pay its suppliers. Since they bore interest at about 3% per annum, many were held as investments; those few that were returned to the Bank for cash were reissued and employed in further loans.

The Bank had a double function: it managed the Government’s accounts and made loans to finance the Government but it also operated as a commercial bank: it took deposits and issued notes to private customers. Much of the cash from the shareholders was used not for the war loan but to circulate additional sealed bills issued out to private borrowers, raising returns even further.

The authorizing statute had imposed two important limitations: the Bank could lend no more than £1.2 million to the government without parliamentary dispensation and could issue no more than £1.2 million in sealed bills. The first limitation actually proved an asset, since over the next year or two Bank directors often made it an excuse for refusing further loans to the Crown (loans they were reluctant to make in any case). But the ceiling on sealed bills was a real constraint. Bank directors evaded it by issuing what they called “running cash notes”. Instead of being stamped with the Bank’s seal, these small-denomination notes were merely signed by its cashiers and they bear no interest (unlike the sealed bills). The Bank’s numerous critics tried to make an issue of this, but the notes continued in circulation. These “running cash notes” became in fact the forerunners of present-day paper currency.

By February 1695, the bank had advanced to the Government not only the whole of its original capital of £1,200,000, but also a further sum of £300,000. But there were even bigger remittances to follow within the next eighteen months. The government could not stop borrowing, breaking the limitations that it had imposed on itself. The government had just discovered the possibility of an “almost” endless means of finance. But of course, the problems started to come.

The new money created by the Bank of England splashed through the economy like rain in April. Consequently, when these plentiful banknotes landed in the other banks’ hands, they quickly put them into the vaults and then issued their own certificates in even greater amounts. As a result, prices doubled in just two years. Then, the inevitable happened: There was a run on the bank, and the Bank of England could not produce the coin. In May of 1696, just two years after the Bank was formed, a law was passed authorizing it to “suspend payment in specie” [suspend payment in gold for the face value of the note being presented]. By force of law, the Bank was now exempted from having to honour its contract to return the gold. Fiat money had been born. With it one of the key features of the modern State had been born.

With this event two other institutions had been born: the Central Bank and the National Debt. That Central Bank is still with us and has become a dominant institution in today’s economy and that national debt we, the citizens, still carry forward and which in aggregate, is in fact unrepayable. The citizens of Britain still have not been able to repay their debt three hundred years later. Today the national debt of Britain is 1 trillion pounds.

In 1694, the Bank of England was not yet a central bank in the modern sense but it was the seed for the central bank. The capacity to act as lender of last resort and regulator of financial activity within the economy at large was only developed gradually during the next century as the complexity of the financial system grew.

As the Government borrowed more and more money, these outstanding loans were called the National Debt. This debt was different from before. Sovereign’s debt had always existed. However, how the king could make his promise to pay trustworthy, was the critical problem. Defaulting had become a common phenomenon in England since the medieval period. In the medieval period, tax collection was a very difficult task; the king often relegated local agents and office holders to collect taxes for the sovereign, a practice curiously called tax farming. Generally, these agents or office holders had tax exemption privilege, narrowing the tax base and reducing tax revenue. Tax was never enough. Borrowing against the taxes was the only choice. For the king the best choice was to default to his creditors. Although cooperation with the creditors seem to be the best choice, this was not always possible. Creditors (later bankers) and Kings had a difficult relationship. Cooperation could not crystallise. This changed for ever with the Bank of England.

The establishment of the Bank of England altered the sovereign’s (State’s) incentives to accept debt. The debt could be easily distributed to all the people by a new mechanism: the issue of non-redeemable or partly redeemable paper money. Thanks to the Bank the State was capable of making its debt trustworthy. It was not “his” debt it was the “national” debt. The State provided the Law to make the new money legal, the bank could provide almost endless amounts of that money. The two institutions seemed to gain, they could cooperate for the first time. This event altered the sovereign’s (State’s) incentives to accept more debt. From this moment onwards, the raising and raising of debt would reach unprecedented levels in history. This debt fuelled the extraordinary rise of the banking institution and brought it from the fringes of society to the very centre by becoming the new master of the economy.