Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Commercial bank money or demand deposits are claims against financial institutions that can be used for the purchase of goods and services. A demand deposit account is an account from which funds can be withdrawn at any time by check or cash withdrawal without giving the bank or financial institution any prior notice. Banks have the legal obligation to return funds held in demand deposits immediately upon demand (or 'at call'). Demand deposit withdrawals can be performed in person, via checks or bank drafts, using automatic teller machines (ATMs), or through online banking.
Commercial bank money is created through fractional-reserve banking, the banking practice where banks keep only a fraction of their deposits in reserve (as cash and other highly liquid assets) and lend out the remainder, while maintaining the simultaneous obligation to redeem all these deposits upon demand. Commercial bank money differs from commodity and fiat money in two ways, firstly it is non-physical, as its existence is only reflected in the account ledges of banks and other financial institutions, and secondly, there is some element of risk that the claim will not be fulfilled if the financial institution becomes insolvent. The process of fractional-reserve banking has a cumulative effect of money creation by commercial banks, as it expands money supply (cash and demand deposits) beyond what it would otherwise be. Because of the prevalence of fractional reserve banking, the broad money supply of most countries is a multiple larger than the amount of base money created by the country's central bank. That multiple (called the money multiplier) is determined by the reserve requirement or other financial ratio requirements imposed by financial regulators.
The money supply of a country is usually held to be the total amount of currency in circulation plus the total amount of checking and savings deposits in the commercial banks in the country.

talk money. Not numbers, but feelings. Because the way we feel about money says--and shapes--more about us than we realize. Usually money is seen in black-and-white terms: We have enough of it or we don't. "But money is also a hugely emotional, psychological and symbolic entity in our lives; we each bring our own meanings, emotions and experiences to our relationship with it," says psychotherapist Kate Levinson, Ph.D. In leading her "Emotional Currency" workshops, Levinson finds that such feelings can be a catalyst for personal transformation. "It's an incredibly good vehicle for seeing our issues and vulnerabilities because it touches on almost all aspects of life and it reveals deep parts of our psyches, including our needs, fears and desires," she says.

Cash refers to money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. After the collapse of the Roman empire, coins, silver jewelry and hacksilver (silver objects hacked into pieces) were for centuries the only form of money, until Venetian merchants started using silver bars for large transactions in the early Middle Ages. In a separate development, Venetian merchants started using paper bills, instructing their banker to make payments. Similar marked silver bars were in use in lands where the Venetian merchants had established representative offices. The Byzantine empire and several states in the Balkan area and Russia also used marked silver bars for large payments. As the world economy developed and silver supplies increased, in particular after the colonization of South America, coins became larger and a standard coin for international payment developed from the 15th century: the Spanish and Spanish colonial coin of 8 reales. Its counterpart in gold was the Venetian ducat.
Coin types would compete for markets. By conquering foreign markets, the issuing rulers would enjoy extra income from seigniorage (the difference between the value of the coin and the value of the metal the coin was made of). Successful coin types of high nobility would be copied by lower nobility for seigniorage. Imitations were usually of a lower weight, undermining the popularity of the original. As feudal states coalesced into kingdoms, imitation of silver types abated, but gold coins, in particular the gold ducat and the gold florin were still issued as trade coins: coins without a fixed value, going by weight. Colonial powers also sought to take away market share from Spain by issuing trade coin equivalents of silver Spanish coins, without much success.
Meanwhile, paper money had been developed. At first, it was thought of as emergency issues, so that they were most popular in the colonies of Europea powers. In the 18th century, important paper issues were made in colonies such as Ceylon and the bordering colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice. John Law did pioneering work on banknotes with the Banque Royale. However, the relation between money supply and inflation was still imperfectly understood and the bank went under, while its notes became worthless when they were over-issued. The lessons learned were applied to the Bank of England, which played a crucial role in financing Wellington's Peninsular war, against French troops, hamstrung by a metallic Franc de Germinal.
The ability to create paper money made nation-states responsible for the management of inflation, through control of the money supply. It also made a direct relation between the metal of the coin and its denomination superfluous. From 1816, coins generally became token money, though some large silver and gold coins remained standard coins until 1927. The first world war saw standard coins disappear to a very large extent. Afterwards, standard gold coins, mainly British sovereigns, would still be used in colonies and less developed economies and silver Maria Theresa thalers dated 1780 would be struck as trade coins for countries in East Asia until 1946 and possibly later locally.
Cash has now become a very small part of the money supply. Its remaining role is to make small payments conveniently and promptly, a role which is constantly undermined by electronic forms of payment.
In bookkeeping and finance, "cash" refers to current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-immediately (as in the case of money market accounts). Cash is seen either as a reserve for payments, in case of a structural or incidental negative cash flow or as a way to avoid a downturn on financial markets.

Thursday, November 12, 2009


banks

Banks are open 9 am to 3 pm Monday through Friday, Nepal Bank Ltd. on New Road (Ph: 4221185) is open 7 am to 7 pm all days of the week. The Kantipath branch (Ph: 4227375) is open 9 am to 3.30 pm Monday through Friday, 9 am to 1 pm on Saturday, and closed on Sunday. Rastriya Banijya Bank exchange counter at Bishal Bazaar (Ph: 4223776) is open 9 am to 3 pm daily except holidays.Nepal Bangladesh Bank at Kathmandu Plaza (Ph: 4258308) is open 9 am to 3.30 pm, and its branch at New Road (Ph: 4256734) is open till 7 pm. Standard Charted Bank (used to be Grindlays Bank) on Kantipath (Ph: 4228474) is open 9.30 am to 3.30 pm. There is also an ATM here for Visa and Mastercard access. Counters of Himalayan Bank at Thamel (Ph: 4227749) open 9 am to 3.30 pm and New Road (Ph: 4243107) are open 9 am to 5.30 pm, closed on Saturdays. Other banks are Nepal Arab Bank, Kantipath (Ph: 4226786); Nepal SBI Bank, Durbar Marg (Ph: 4225326); Everest Bank, New Baneswar (Ph: 4482578); Nepal Indosuez Bank, Durbar Marg (Ph: 4228229); Nepal Sri Lanka Merchant Bank, Bagh Bazar (Ph: 4227555) and the Bank of Kathmandu, Thamel (Ph: 4430640). The counters of licensed money changers are open 12 hours a day.

Monday, November 9, 2009




When gold and silver are used as money, the money supply can grow only if the supply of these metals is increased by mining. This rate of increase will accelerate during periods of gold rushes and discoveries, such as when Columbus discovered the new world and brought back gold and silver to Spain, or when gold was discovered in California in 1848. This causes inflation, as the value of gold goes down. However, if the rate of gold mining cannot keep up with the growth of the economy, gold becomes relatively more valuable, and prices (denominated in gold) will drop, causing deflation. Deflation was the more typical situation for over a century when gold and paper money backed by gold were used as money in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Modern day monetary systems are based on fiat money and are no longer tied to the value of gold. The control of the amount of money in the economy is known as monetary policy. Monetary policy is the process by which a government, central bank, or monetary authority manages the money supply to achieve specific goals. Usually the goal of monetary policy is to accommodate economic growth in an environment of stable prices. For example, it is clearly stated in the Federal Reserve Act that the Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee should seek “to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”
A failed monetary policy can have significant detrimental effects on an economy and the society that depends on it. These include hyperinflation, stagflation, recession, high unemployment, shortages of imported goods, inability to export goods, and even total monetary collapse and the adoption of a much less efficient barter economy. This happened in Russia, for instance, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Governments and central banks have taken both regulatory and free market approaches to monetary policy. Some of the tools used to control the money supply include:
changing the interest rate at which the government loans or borrows money
currency purchases or sales
increasing or lowering government borrowing
increasing or lowering government spending
manipulation of exchange rates
raising or lowering bank reserve requirements
regulation or prohibition of private currencies
taxation or tax breaks on imports or exports of capital into a country
In the US, the Federal Reserve is responsible for controlling the money supply, while in the Euro area the respective institution is the European Central Bank. Other central banks with significant impact on global finances are the Bank of Japan, People's Bank of China and the Bank of England.
For many years much of monetary policy was influenced by an economic theory known as monetarism. Monetarism is an economic theory which argues that management of the money supply should be the primary means of regulating economic activity. The stability of the demand for money prior to the 1980s was a key finding of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz supported by the work of David Laidler, and many others. The nature of the demand for money changed during the 1980s owing to technical, institutional, and legal factors and the influence of monetarism has since decreased.