Lira

“ By one of those phenomena of national and international speculations, which are not infrequent in modern life, many of our industrial stocks and even government bonds had risen to figures which were hyperbolical and inconceivable, if one considered the relation that should exist between the value of our lira and its purchasing power in regard to gold. ”

“ Hundreds of accounts and bills have been received, audited and paid, and scarcely any two correspond in piaster equivalents. Therefore, although the money unit is the gold piaster, and the monetary standard the gold lira, the frequent changes in valuation is very bewildering to foreigners, and necessitates frequent conference with persons who, after long years of residence, have reached an equitable basis by which monetary equivalents can be ascertained. ”

“ You may look for promotion in the near future."
"Have I your permission, sir, to ask if that was Ensign Darrin's letter and if it was in good order?" asked Runkle.
"It was, my man, thanks to your intelligent [146] and courageous performance of duty. Runkle, how much money did the bravos take from you?"
"Eighteen dollars in real money, sir, and about two dollars in lira money."
Sailors sometimes call the Italian money "lira money," because the lire, which is worth about the same as the French franc, or twenty cents, is the common unit of Italian currency. "Lira" is the plural of "lire." ”

“ According to one of the Armenians, the Turkish finance was in an utterly hopeless condition.
"Our Government," he remarked, "first said 309 that it would only issue paper money to the amount of 3,000,000 liras, and we have caime to the value of 11,000,000 liras in circulation!"
"Yes," said another merchant, "the lira is now at 160 piastres, but if there is a war it will rise to 500."
"The Government will be the loser in the long run," he continued, "every one is speculating for the fall, and we are buying up all the gold we can." ”

“ Egyptian money is not very difficult to understand: the principal coin is a piastre, which is equal to twopence-halfpenny; and half a piastre, which looks like a silver sixpence, but isn't silver at all, serves the purposes of a penny, though it is really equal to a penny-farthing. There are no coppers here. The most useful coin—corresponding to our shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira—is rather like an overgrown shilling to look at and equal to five piastres or a halfpenny more than a shilling. ”

“ In order to have a sounder, readier, more agile organization, I had decided on the unification of all the institutions issuing paper money. Only the Bank of Italy has the power to issue paper money; the Bank of Naples and the Bank of Sicily returned to their original functions of guardians and stimulators of the agricultural economic life of southern Italy.
When, after a year of notable difficulties, the financial situation of the budget and of Italian economy had been cleared, I was able to address myself, in 1927, to the new gold basis of the lira, on concrete foundations. ”

“ The cost of everything has advanced from 200 to 1,200 per cent. The price of a meal is no longer reckoned in piastres but in Turkish pounds, though this is not as startling as it sounds, for the Turkish lira has dropped to about a quarter of its normal value. Quite a modest dinner for two at such places as Tokatlian's, the Pera Palace Hotel, or the Pera Gardens, costs the equivalent of from fifteen to twenty dollars. Everything else is in proportion. ”

“ The single boatman who plies sculls and sail, charges us a " lira esterlina^' — not lira Toscana, the pund Scots — for a few minutes^ row, when he should land us from the outer Road for a dollar, and for half a dollar from the Bay. We now begin to realize the ex- tortions of Monte Video, and to learn something about the currency : why do travellers so persistently neglect to lecture their readers upon this important subject ?
The safest plan here, as in most parts of South America, is to carry sovs. ”

“ The currency is all silver, with the exception of bank notes to the value of about one dollar, and the expenses of life are nearly double those of Denmark, as all the luxuries of life come from abroad. The currency of Sweden, on the contrary, is almost all government paper, and the rag currency reminds me of our shin-plaster days. A paper rix-dollar is about twenty-five cents, and they have notes as low in value as eight cents of our money; the consequence is, that in getting a piece of coin changed of the value of an American dollar, you have a pocketful of rags in exchange. ”

“ By the latter the currency is enlarged at the expense of the people,—being at once a tax and a derangement of values. You pamper the morbid appetite for paper money, and play the discarded part of John Law. You blow up a bladder, without thinking that it is nothing but a bladder, ready to burst. As the volume of currency is increased, the purchasing power of each dollar is reduced in proportion. As you add to the currency, you take from the dollar. You do little more than mark your goods at [Pg 293] higher prices, and imagine that they have increased in value. ”

“ Not so, however, with an inconvertible paper currency. Excepting the specie used in the payment of customs and the interest on our public debt, we are cut off from the money currents of the world. Our currency resembles rather the waters of an artificial lake, which lie in stagnation or rise to full banks at the caprice of the gate-keeper.
335“Gold and silver abhor depreciated paper money, and will not keep company with it. If our currency be more abundant than business demands, not a dollar of it can go abroad; if deficient, not a dollar of gold will come in to supply the lack. ”

“ By demanding payment of the bank, the owner of a bank credit would lose this premium. As a shilling fresh from the mint will buy no more goods in the market than one of our common worn shillings, so the good and true money which might be brought from the coffers of the bank into those of a private person, being mixed and confounded with the common currency of the country, would be of no more value than that currency, from which it could no longer be readily distinguished. ”

“ We place gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents, as far as they operate by signature;—on the side of store as far as they operate by value. Then the currency represents the quantity of debt in the country, and the store the quantity of its possession. The ownership of all the property is divided between the holders of currency and holders of store, and whatever the claiming value of the currency is at any moment, that value is to be deducted from the riches of the store-holders. ”

“ The paper money, according to the universal law, that an inferior currency always crowds out the superior one, will circulate alone. Suppose, then, it appears that the paper circulation alone is in excess of the real requirements of the business of the country, what then? Then something like the amount of that excess will go to the Treasury for redemption, and the coin paid out in that redemption being over and above the volume of the circulation required by the business of the country, will again either be hoarded or go into our foreign commerce and flow out. ”

“ The substitute for all kinds of bank notes as the money for the people should be a purely people’s money—a national currency whose basis of value would be the accumulated wealth of the country, and also its capacity for regularly increasing such wealth. Is there any reliance to be placed in a currency issued by an individual or a number of individuals through an incorporated bank, based upon his or their wealth, which is at all times liable to pass into the hands of other individuals? ”

“ The establishment of the bank and the consequent issue of its notes therefore, as well as the discovery of the mine, operates as a stimulus to the exportation either of bullion or of coin,, and are beneficial only in as far as that object may be accomplished. The bank substitutes a currency of no value for one most costly, and enables us to turn the precious metals (which., though a very necessary part of our capital, yield no revenue,) into a capital which will yield one. ”

“ This bonded debt was made the basis of a national bank currency for the redemption of which, at first in legal tender paper and coin, and later in gold, the people as debtors to the banks were in the last analysis responsible. In other words the national bank currency derived its sole value as a reliable medium of exchange from the fact that it was based on the public credit, and this public credit belonged to the people, but the private banking associations got the benefit for the private [Pg 249] gain of their stockholders, and the service rendered, cost the people many times its worth. ”

“ At Funchal, Portuguese [Pg 200] money was current; at Gibraltar and at Malta, English money; at Granada, Spanish; at Algiers, French; at Athens, Greek; at Constantinople and Jerusalem, Turkish. In Cairo another coinage was current, and in Italy the Turkish and Egyptian coins left over had to be sold to the money changers or taken home as souvenirs. In large cities the hotels and larger stores accepted American, English, and French money at its value, but small dealers and individuals knew nothing of foreign coins and wanted payment in their own currency. ”

“ Wherefore our citizens, as we say, should have a coin passing current among themselves, but not accepted among the rest of mankind; with a view, however, to expeditions and journeys to other lands,―for embassies, or for any other occasion which may arise of sending out a herald, the state must also possess a common Hellenic currency. If a private person is ever obliged to go abroad, let him have the consent of the magistrates and go; and if when he returns he has any foreign money remaining, let him give the surplus back to the treasury, and receive a corresponding sum in the local currency. ”

“ In this emergency the British merchants showed the resource which has always been their characteristic, and, in default of an adequate supply of specie, relieved the strain upon their currency by issuing paper. Mediæval banking had gone no further than the establishment of reserves of coin, to serve as a medium for clearing bills of exchange; the English took the great step of accelerating the circulation of their money, by using this reserve as a basis for a paper currency which might be largely expanded. ”

“ Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The Minister of Finance reiterated his call for supply with, a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent, creating a new paper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands. They issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands made upon them by the bank of discount, the great machine or paper-mill of their fictitious wealth. ”

“ It was up to the officers to see that the prices were not exorbitant. We always used Indian currency—the rupee and the anna. In normal times a rupee is about a third of a dollar. Throughout the occupied area Turkish currency also circulated, but the native invariably preferred to be paid in Indian. Curiously enough, even on entering towns like Tauq, we found the inhabitants eager for payment in rupees. I was told that in the money market in Baghdad a British advance would be heralded by a slump in Turkish exchange. ”

“ Scarce a pecuniary transaction can occur, but the silent, and eloquent medallion of the unhappy monarch, seems to remind these bewildered people of his fate, and their past misfortunes. Although the country is poor, all their payments are made in cash, this is owing to the shock given by the revolution, to individual, and consequently to paper credit.
To comprehend their money, it must be known, although the french always calculate by livres, as we do by pounds sterling, that the livre is no coin, but computation. ”

“ If the document says gold currency, the borrower would give the smallest amount of gold currency that is used. If the document says gold dinarim or dinar of gold, the borrower would give two gold dinar. If the document says gold in dinarim, the borrower would give gold that is worth two dinars of silver. In today’s age there is no distinction between saying “dinarin” or “dinari.”
Paragraph 14- If one produces a document against another with a sum of 100 dinar or selaim and the currency is undefined and it was written in Bavel, the lender would collect Babylonian currency. ”

“ Money is also conveyed from province to province by these Tartars, when, if the amount is large, several horses are strung together, and are escorted by mounted police. The currency in the interior being silver coins of the size of our five-shilling pieces, the jolting and friction occasioned by the drive are likely to tear ordinary bags, so the latter are enclosed in a special rope-bag, which is neatly and compactly knitted over them. Gold coin is put up in leather, which is puckered up to form a bag, and tied and sealed on the top. ”