STOCKHOLM, Bank of. As this was the earliest bank to issue circulating notes, an out line of its history can scarcely fail to prove of practical value. After the death of Gustavus Vasa his daughter, the Regent Christina, 1632 45, was compelled by the embarrassments of the treasury to issue a sort of exchequer-bill, which appears to have had a somewhat slow and grudging circulation as money. Ten years later the treasury, still embarrassed, adopted the suggestions of a financier named Palm struck and established a bank at Stockholm in 1656, which invited deposits of coins, bullion and ranstyks, for which it granted transferable credits on its books in *Bank-money"; an ex pedient which met the approval of the com mercial community. In 16..58 the bank began to issue which being more con venient than copper runstylcs soon drove the latter into the bank, which now being upon an avowedly copper basis, began to lose credit as bullion copper fell in value and the copper plates to support the transport-notes became too• heavy for convenient circulation. In this dilemma
Baron George Heinrich de Goertz, the king's financial adviser, closed the mints to the coinage" of copper and issued light copper Bal ers (dollars) instead. But the government was too weak to sustain a fiduciary currency; the pieces were too inartistic to defy counterfeiting, and there was no fixed limit to their emission, three cardinal requirements of such a currency, especially the third one. The inevitable con sequence was a ruinous fall in their value, a rise of popular indignation against Baron Goertz, his impeachment, trial, condemnation and unjust execution 3 March 1719.' The bank (Rigsbank) is still in existence. (Consult 'His tory of Monetary Systems,' 298). For list of other ancient banks see list under the heading BANKS AND BANKING.