Volume 13, Number 2; Summer 2010
Selgin (2009) offers a challenge to 100 percent reserve banking by noting that small change would be unprofitable with 100 percent reserve money. This minor challenge fails firstly because 100 percent reserve banking does not require 100 percent reserve money, only market determined money. Small change is shown here to not be a problem in the free market. Evidence from Richard Cantillon (1730) suggests that in the absence of government coercion, small change was not a problem.
