MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA
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members nominated by the government and forbidding the banks to transact any business without the sanction of the Secretary of Hacienda.
"On September 26, the Council of Sequestration named by the government went to the Banco Nacional to take possession. As the Directors' Council of the bank protested against these violent measures, on September 28, the manager and the assistant manager of the bank were arrested at their homes by order of the military authorities, while an armed force presented itself at the bank, making all employees and domestics leave and then closing the doors.
"The bank was forced to grant to the government a first loan of 5,000,000 gold pesos. This forced loan was followed by others until all specie holdings of the bank were successively remitted to the government and the bank was thus despoiled of thirty to thirty-five million pesos in gold and silver which had guaranteed the circulation before the Carranza government came into power. Since then and until the present time the bank, besides having been thus deprived of its specie holdings, was forbidden to transact any financial business, exchange or other; so that it is obliged to maintain a staff of employees and to meet general expenses which are very high, while it is impossible for it to earn a cent. Practically, the Banco Nacional has seen its credit balance reduced to almost nothing, as a result of the obligation to-accept paper money; its concession which was granted in 1 884 has been annulled; it has been forbidden to transact any financial business, even the most, legitimate; in principle, its management is in the hands of the
