Capital, then, is wealth invested in industry, finance is the machinery by which this process of investment is carried out, and international finance is the machinery by which the wealth of one country is invested in another.
Let us consider the case of a doctor in a provincial town who is making an annual income of about L800 a year, living on L600 of it and saving L200. Instead of spending this quarter of his income on immediate enjoyments, such as wine and cigars, and journeys to London, he invests it in different parts of the world through the mechanism of international finance, because he has been attracted by the advantages of a system of investment which was fashionable some years ago, which worked by what was called Geographical Distribution.
This meant to say that the investors who put their money into as many different countries as possible, so that the risk of loss owing to climatic or other disturbances might be spread as widely as possible. So here we have this quiet country doctor spreading all over the world the money that he gets for dosing and poulticing and dieting his patients, stimulating industry in many climates and bringing some part of its proceeds to be added to his store. Let us see how the process works. Continue reading
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Choosing A High Interest Savings Account
It’s good to save for a rainy day, and many people with spare cash available prefer the security of placing it in a savings account to the more risky but potentially more profitable choice of other investments such as stock market. Choosing a savings account would at first glance seem to be as simple as going for the one with the highest interest rate, but there are several other factors to take into account too.
The first choice to make is between opening an account with a high street bank, or going direct. High street banks give you the advantage of being able to manage your account with face to face contact with real people, and the ability to deposit cash and cheques easily. However, they have not historically offered the most competitive rates of interest, although this is changing slowly.
Direct savings accounts are operated solely online, by telephone, and by post with no possibility of visiting a bank branch to conduct business. This means they are cheaper to run for the banks, with less admin and staff costs, and so in turn they are willing to offer more attractive interest rates. Indeed, when internet direct savings accounts first appeared, some of them offered ten times the interest of a typical branch-based account, although the gap has narrowed considerably over the years. Continue reading