credit supplied by the bank will be able to meet their obligations in full, in view of all the widespread industrial and commercial risks that they are facing.
But there are two important differences between the doubtful assets of a bank and those of an ordinary industrial company. The directors and managers of a bank have a better chance of being able to judge of their value; they are experts in credit, that is, in the solvency of the people to whom they lend, or for whom they accept bills, or whose bills they discount. They are thus only doing what is their own regular job when they make estimates of the value of their promises to pay; whereas an industrial director, in putting a figure against land and buildings, plant and machinery and trade debtors, must often be called on to decide the values of articles on which his opinion, as valuer, is not quite that of an expert.
And the second difference is, that whereas we have reason to hope that the Boards of most industrial companies—at least those which have stood the test of time through a reasonably long life—err on the side of prudence and caution in valuing their assets for balance-sheet purposes, with the banks it is a matter of common knowledge; doubtful
