Letters

摘要

You suggest that Facebook's "Libra Reserve" cannot be a bank, because it holds deposits in private banks and will not have access to central-bank money ("Libralised finance", June 22nd). If so, Walter Bage-hot would have disagreed. During his editorship of your newspaper, hundreds of country banks in England held no accounts at the Bank of England. Instead, they held deposits, in the form of so-called "nostro accounts", in the privately held City of London clearing banks. Only the latter had access to central-bank money through their reserve accounts at the Bank of England.