“Not true. ONLY National banks could print money after 1863, and then only by purchasing US government bonds as a backing kept by the comptroller, but convertible into gold.”
..which I’m familiar with but has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted.
There was a banking regulation that made printing currency preferable to ledger entry checking accounts, so banks printed their own currency to make loans.
And those currencies were not valued equally in the marketplace.
A dollar from the august firm of JP Morgan would trade at par, whereas a dollar issued by some non-money center bank either wouldn’t be accepted or would be taken at a discount to face value.
James Grant named his “Interest Rate Observer” after a daily sheet from that time, the Banknote Observer, that published the market value of various bank currencies.
“NOT ONE ever complained about his banks money being counterfeited.”
It was hardly in the interest of those bankers to complain that their currency was subject to counterfeiting. And counterfeiting was easier in an era where there were competing currencies in circulation. Banks run on confidence and the quickest way to kill that is to let it be known that your currency has a good chance of being fake.
It is no different than today with corporations that have major problems with information security. You won’t know that from reading their statements. But you can find out from security professionals who clean up the mess.
Still no. The bank note reporters universally reflected merely the cost of collecting the national banks’ dollars and retuning them to their region.
BTW, I have never seen a “National Bank of JP Morgan” have you?
And no, there is no archival eprecord anywhere, even private diaries, of any banker (outside the Confederacy) concerned about counterfeiting. Niw, it’s not sufficient to say, “see there is no evidence of concern so that proves that were concerned.” It’s your job to supply proof, which you have yet to do on any point. Keep trying.