This book is concerned with developments in three main areas of monetary history: domestic commercial banking; monetary policy; and the UK’s international financial position. For ease of analysis the 160 years under study are arranged into three clear chronological divisons. Part 1 covers the years 1826-1913, a period in which the UK emerged as the world’s leading economic power. It was in these years that an extensive and fully-operative domestic banking system was established. Part 2 covers 1914 to 1939 – the years which marked a break in the traditional monetary arrangements of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Part 3 covers 1939-1986 when the dominance of state influence within the domestic money markets was re-established by the Second World War and the acceptance by the authorities of the obligation to ‘manage’ the economy which meant that successive postwar governments took direct responsibility for the conduct of monetary and credit policy.

This book is concerned with developments in three main areas of monetary history: domestic commercial banking; monetary policy; and the UK’s international financial position. For ease of analysis the 160 years under study are arranged into three clear chronological divisons. Part 1 covers the years 1826-1913, a period in which the UK emerged as the world’s leading economic power. It was in these years that an extensive and fully-operative domestic banking system was established. Part 2 covers 1914 to 1939 – the years which marked a break in the traditional monetary arrangements of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Part 3 covers 1939-1986 when the dominance of state influence within the domestic money markets was re-established by the Second World War and the acceptance by the authorities of the obligation to ‘manage’ the economy which meant that successive postwar governments took direct responsibility for the conduct of monetary and credit policy.

Surveys the major developments in British banking over the past century and a half, examining changes in the economy and legislation and showing how banks attained their present key positions.

This book was written at a time when the market for government stocks in London, the gilt-edged market of the title, had undergone a period of rapid innovation in the forms of its instruments – index-linked stocks, variable rate stocks, and other new types – and of methods of issue. This had been the response of a government that had needed to fund a massive public sector borrowing requirement despite its attempts to slash public expenditure. In the same period the opening of the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), with its 20-year gilt contract, had introduced a new method for hedging risk for investment managers. This book charts and analyses these developments.

In this book which has become the standard work on building societies, the author takes into account both economic and regulatory changes which took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The book is aimed primarily at students in the industry, and also those undertaking relevant undergraduate and postgraduate courses at university. In addition, this book will be invaluable to those working inside the building society industry and to those organizations which come into contact with societies.

This is widely acknowledged as a scholarly and well-documented study of early banking in England. It bridges gaps in the early history of English banking and deals with the operations of the pre-Bank of England bankers, the evolution of English paper money and the remarkable transactions of the early directors of the Bank of England. Although the main body of the book concentrates on the 16th and 17th centuries, the volume includes a brief survey of English banking in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Jewish community in Rome is the oldest in Europe, the only one to have existed continuously for over 2,000 years. This detailed study of the Jewish banking community in Italy is therefore of special value and interest. Poliakov’s classic account of the rise and fall of the Jewish bankers is at the same time the story of medieval finance in general, its decline, and the birth of ‘modern’ finance. The author traces the economic and theological implication of each stage in the ambiguous relationship that developed between the Jewish money trade and the Holy See. He shows that the protection enjoyed by the Jews from the Holy See had not only theological, but also economic roots. The study ends with an account of the introduction of modern, ‘capitalist’ techniques and of the consequent inevitable decline of the Jewish money trade.