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By 1923 the German banking world was consumed, as Hahn puts it, from morning to night with a single anxiety, the preservation of its capital substance, yet the third edition of Adolf Weber's textbook still fought the prewar battle against the great credit banks. Reviewing it, Hahn dismantles three inherited doctrines: Weber's moralized contrast between English deposit banks and German speculation banks, his loose account of liquidity, and his theory of credit and capital. Genuine risk, he insists, sits with merchants and manufacturers, not with bankers. Liquidity, in a clearing economy, means access to central-bank money rather than idle cash. And the only thing that matters about any credit is whether it enlarges the purchasing power already circulating. Inflation, on this reading, came from state finance, not from weak reserves.
Das Kontokorrentgeschäft aber ist zweifellos das unspekulativste Geschäft, das überhaupt möglich ist, denn seine Gewinnchancen sind in den bedungenen Zinsen und Provisionen von vornherein festgelegt.
English translation: “The current-account business, however, is undoubtedly the least speculative business that is possible at all, for its profit prospects are fixed in advance by the stipulated interest and commissions.”