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SUMMARY:Respectable banking: the search for stability in London’s money 
 and credit markets since the great currency crisis of 1695 - Dr Anthony Ho
 tson\, Wolfson College\, Oxford and Centre for Financial History
DTSTART:20160208T170000Z
DTEND:20160208T183000Z
UID:TALK62050@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Duncan Needham
DESCRIPTION:The history of London’s money and credit markets is one of i
 ntermittent crises interspersed with successive attempts to find ways and 
 means of stabilizing the system. The currency reforms of the eighteenth ce
 ntury\, and the banking ones of the nineteenth\, culminated in a century o
 f stability which lasted until 1971. Recent scholarship has emphasized the
  importance of the Bank of England’s role as lender of last resort\, and
  its modern extension\, deposit insurance. Less heed has been paid to vari
 ous market practices introduced in the late nineteenth century that had th
 e effect of restricting competition between the major clearing banks. Thes
 e practices included curbs on liability management and rediscounting\, pro
 hibitions against speculative lending\, liquidity requirements\, and limit
 s on maturity mismatching. In the 1930s\, the building societies broke mos
 t of these rules\, combining liability management with maturity mismatchin
 g\, and the resultant housing boom could have led to a bust\, but for the 
 war. The cartelization of the mortgage lending rate after the Second World
  War helped to limit liability management\, and provided a mechanism for m
 anaging liquidity in a sector that faced considerable maturity mismatching
 .      \nA tendency to downplay the importance of these restrictions has e
 ncouraged a degree of complacency about their removal\, and the deregulati
 on that started in 1971 created a banking model that disregarded these pri
 nciples of sound banking. The events of 2007-8 suggest a reappraisal is ne
 eded\, and this study offers a revised interpretation of developments in t
 he London market since the great currency crisis of 1695. Particular empha
 sis is placed on the development of stabilizing practices that culminated 
 in the clearing bank model of the 1890s and the building societies model o
 f the 1950s\, both of which lasted until the onset of deregulation in the 
 1970s and 1980s. 
LOCATION:Darwin College (Seminar Room\, No. 1 Newnham Terrace - entrance v
 ia Porters Lodge on Silver St)
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