Brad DeLong zitiert zum Thema Griechenland aus dem Klassiker Lombard Street von Walter Bagehot:
„‚On extraordinary occasions,‘ says Ricardo, ‚a general panic may seize the country, when every one becomes desirous of possessing himself of the precious metals as the most convenient mode of realising or concealing his property,—against such panic banks have no security on any system.‘ The bank or banks which hold the reserve may last a little longer than the others; but if apprehension pass a certain bound, they must perish too.
The use of credit is, that it enables debtors to use a certain part of the money their creditors have lent them. If all those creditors demand all that money at once, they cannot have it, for that which their debtors have used, is for the time employed, and not to be obtained. With the advantages of credit we must take the disadvantages too; but to lessen them as much as we can, we must keep a great store of ready money always available, and advance out of it very freely in periods of panic, and in times of incipient alarm…“
Und weiter:
„The way in which the panic of 1825 was stopped by advancing money has been described in so broad and graphic a way that the passage has become classical. ‚We lent it,‘ said Mr. Harman, on behalf of the Bank of England,
by every possible means and in modes we had never adopted before; we took in stock on security, we purchased Exchequer bills, we made advances on Exchequer bills, we not only discounted outright, but we made advances on the deposit of bills of exchange to an immense amount, in short, by every possible means consistent with the safety of the Bank, and we were not on some occasions over-nice. Seeing the dreadful state in which the public were, we rendered every assistance in our power.
After a day or two of this treatment, the entire panic subsided, and the ‚City‘ was quite calm….“