Tabl. 6. Goldsmiths as bankers

The first row shows what the goldsmith did before he made this loan. He had a hundred dollars of gold, which he owed to the people who had deposited it with him, so his assets and liabilities were the same. But when he lent, say, $10 of gold to the firm, he actually had only $90 of gold in his vault plus the value of his loan. His assets still equalled his liabilities, but he was going to get some interest.

It so happened that the firm, that took out the loan, didn't really want to carry that $10 of gold around, so it asked the goldsmith if, instead of actually taking the gold, it could be given a deposit. The third row of Tabl. 6 shows what happened then. Although the goldsmith's assets and liabilities were the same, but were then worth $110, not $100. When the firm wrote a cheque for $10, and that person came in to collect his $10 worth of gold, the goldsmith's assets failed, but so did his liabilities (the fourth row of the table). The important point to notice here is that it made no difference to the goldsmith whether his initial loan was in actual gold or in a form of a deposit.

Now let's turn to the question of reserves. Reserves are the amount of gold that is immediately available in the vault to meet depositors' demands. People originally deposited $100 of gold with the goldsmith. The goldsmith lent $10, leaving himself with $90. As a banker he was relying on the fact that not everyone would want their gold back at the same time. If they had done, he couldn't have paid out. His reserves of $90 were not enough.

The goldsmith in the table has a 100% reserve ratio. The reserve ratio is the ratio of reserves to deposits. Once he has made his loan, he has a 90% deposit ratio. This is a small risk with a small profit. How much dare he lend out in order to make a profit through his interest charges? What are the risks involved^ Suppose the goldsmith took too much of a risk. He lent 80% of the gold he had. This panicked people. They doubted he could pay them all back, he was bound to lose some of the gold he had lent, so they rushed to get their gold back before it was too late. That was what we would now call a run on the bank, a financial panic. And the financial panic leads to exactly what people fear. the bank cannot pay them, goes bankrupt, and they go bankrupt as well.