看看美国最早的银行：The Early Banking(图文)

In the new nation emerged two kinds of bank -the commercial banks chartered by state legislatures and the Bank of the United States deriving its authority by act of the U.S. Congress.1

After the commercial boom beginning in 1793, a large number of banks were established by special state charters. Almost all of these state-chartered banks were private, with the power to issue their own paper money.2 A group of investors would set aside a reserve of specie3 from their own assets as starting capital, and then take deposits and make loans. The loans were often self-liquidating4 in that they bridged the gap between production and sale, underwriting trade credit and supporting increasingly commercialized farmers between planting and harvest. By 1860 more than 1,500 state banks were issuing, on an average, six different denominations of notes.5 Most notes were acceptable at a distance from the issuing bank only at a discount, and anyone ignorant of the actual worth of a note was open to loss. Notes of "broken" or liquidated banks sometimes remained in circulation for long periods, and counterfeiting was a continuing problem.6 Some counterfeiters specialized in the manufacturing end of the business; others, called utters, were adept at passing the bogus money.

建立之初的美国出现了两类银行，即由州议会特许成立的商业银行与由美国国会法案批准成立的美利坚银行。

随着1793年以后商业的日益繁荣，一大批银行经各州特许纷纷建立。这些特许银行几乎都是私营的，有权发行自己的纸币。一些投资者从自己的财产中拿出一部分金银作为启动资本，然后开始吸收存款并进行贷款。这些贷款通常是自偿的，因为它们连接了生产和销售，支持了贸易信贷，并为日益商业化的农场主提供资金以度过播种与收割之间的困难时期。到了1860年，1,500多家州级银行平均发行六种不同面值的纸币。大部分纸币在远离发行银行的地方只被折价接受，因而不了解纸币实际价值的人往往会吃亏。经营不善或破产了的银行的纸币有时仍继续流通很长时间。同时，造假币也一直是个问题。造假币者中的一些人专门负责制造，而被称为‘假币使用者’的另一些人则谙熟假币流通之道。

The other kind of bank -the Bank of the United States was simultaneously a commercial bank and a quasi-public central bank7. The First Bank of the United States, chartered by the Congress in 1791, owed its existence to Alexander Hamilton8 who, shortly after becoming Secretary of the Treasury, showed remarkable insight into the financial problems of the young country and the economic implications of banking. The First Bank of the United States operated much like a private bank, printing notes and exchanging them for borrowers' interest-bearing promises to pay. But unlike a regular commercial bank, it had the federal government as a partner and number one customer. The Bank served as the fiscal agent for the government, holding government tax receipts, paying government bills, performing various financial housekeeping tasks. In return, the government kept its cash as deposits with the First Bank of the United States, giving it a huge financial base. The First Bank's federal charter, moreover, allowed it to operate branches in all states, giving it a big competitive edge over regular state-chartered banks, which could operate only in the states that chartered them. Gradually the First Bank of the United States evolved into a sort of banker's bank, gaining the power to police lesser commercial banks.
另外一种银行为美利坚银行，它既是商业银行又是准公共性质的中央银行。1791年，美利坚第一银行经国会特许成立，它的成立应归功于亚历山大· 汉密尔顿。他就任财政部长不久就对新生的美国面临的财政问题以及银行业的经济意义显示出极强的洞察力。美利坚第一银行在运作上很像是一家私人银行，可以印制纸币并依据借款人支付利息的承诺放贷。与通常的商业银行不同的是，它拥有联邦政府作为合伙人和头号客户。它充当了联邦政府的财政代理：为政府保管税收收入，替政府办理账单支付，并为政府执行各种金融保管任务。作为回报，政府将现金存入美利坚第一银行，从而使该银行有了巨大的金融基础。由于美利坚第一银行经联邦特许可在各州设立分行，而通常由各州特许成立的银行只能在其州内经营，所以相比之下，美利坚第一银行有很大的竞争优势。美利坚第一银行因而逐渐演化为银行的银行，把握着监督较小的商业银行的权力。

All this changed in 1811, when Congress decided not to renew the First Bank's charter.9 Opposition to renewal in part came from Anti-Federalists -notably Thomas Jefferson10-who saw the Bank as a bulwark of big government, concentrated economic power. Equally strong opposition came from state-chartered banks, which resented its real or imagined regulatory power.

In the five years following the demise of the First Bank, many of the fears of its supporters were realized. The number of state banks almost tripled despite the dislocations caused by war. The quantity of outstanding bank notes rose from $36 million to $76 million. The specie held by the banking system actually declined. As a result, the structure of banking was seriously weakened, and in 1814 a run on banks11 forced most to renege on their legal obligations to exchange notes for specie. It is possible that a strong central bank with a management devoted to conservative note-issuing practices could have prevented the rapid note expansion.

In 1816 the Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States along the same lines as the First Bank. After a rocky start12, the Second Bank recaptured its special position in the banking community under the able hand of prominent Philadelphian Nicholas Biddle13. There followed more than a decade of national financial stability.
1811年，乾坤得以扭转——国会决定不再为美利坚第一银行续签特许状。反对意见部分来自反联邦党人士，特别是托马斯·杰斐逊，他们将美利坚第一银行视为捍卫大政府与经济集权的堡垒。州级特许银行同样强烈反对，他们对美利坚第一银行所拥有的实际的和他们想像出来的管理权忿懑不已。

在美利坚第一银行终结后的五年中，该银行支持者的诸多担忧成了现实。尽管战争造成了混乱，但州立银行的数目几乎增至三倍。已发行流通的银行券的数额由3,600万美元上升为7,600万美元。银行体系所持有的金银实际上减少了。结果，银行业的结构严重削弱，而1814年的银行挤兑迫使大多数银行背弃自己的法定义务，拒绝将银行券兑换成金银。如果有一个强大的中央银行，其管理层坚持谨慎地发行银行券，那么防止银行券的迅速膨胀则是可能的。

1816年，按照创建美利坚第一银行的思路，国会特许美利坚第二银行成立。艰难的开端过后，美利坚第二银行在声名显赫的费城人尼古拉斯·比德尔强有力的管理下夺回了在银行界的特殊地位。

Like its predecessor, the Second Bank had enemies. Banks in general resented the Second Bank's privilege of holding government deposits, funds which they believed might as easily be part of their own reserve base. Most important the Second Bank had to contend with the bitter opposition of a remarkably effective politician President Andrew Jackson14, who announced his goal in 1828, fully seven years before the Bank would need to be rechartered. Winning the election campaign of 1832, Jackson wasted no time in putting as much distance as legally possible between the federal Treasury and the national bank. He withdrew government deposits from the Second Bank and placed them in his“pet banks” around the country.15


If destruction of the Second Bank of the United States was folly16, then the price of that folly was several decades of financial instability, when a majority of states experimented with some form of free banking17 legislation. Typically these laws allowed anyone to set up a bank, provided the issue of notes was backed with securities kept on deposit with the state banking authority. Some free banking states, like Louisiana, could boast of perfect success in protecting bank customers. Others -notably Michigan -became refuges for wildcatters18. Obviously the era of free banking had dragged too long before the Federal Reserve System19 came forth in 1913.

与美利坚第一银行一样，美利坚第二银行也有对头。对于美利坚第二银行持有政府存款的特权，商业银行通常愤愤不平，它们认为政府存款本可以成为自己的储备金的一部分。更重要的是，美利坚第二银行不得不对抗来自一位相当能干的政治家安德鲁·杰克逊总统的强烈反对。早在1828年杰克逊总统就宣布了他的目标，此时距给美利坚第二银行重发特许状还有整整七年！1832年赢得大选后，杰克逊便立即着手尽可能地依法把联邦财政与国家银行分离开来。他把政府存款从美利坚第二银行取出，放到他自己在全国各地的“宠儿银行”中去。

如果说毁掉美利坚第二银行是愚蠢的行为，这一蠢行的代价就是数十年的金融不稳定。这些年间大多数州都尝试了某种形式的自由银行制度。通常在这些州法律允许任何人设立银行，前提是银行券的发行要有证券支持，证券由州银行主管部门保管。一些实行自由银行制度的州，如路易斯安那，可夸口自己在保护银行主顾方面很成功，其他州则成了野猫银行设立者的避难所，以密歇根州最为突出。美国联邦储备系统1913年诞生之时，自由银行时代显然已拖得太久了。