TWO NOTES ON THE UNIQUENESS OF COMMERCIAL BANKS.

The purpose of Part I of this paper is to place the contribution of Guttentag-Lindsay in historical perspective and in particular to relate the entire controversy concerning the uniqueness of commercial banks to the nineteenth century dispute regarding the uniqueness of the Bank of England. My objective will be accomplished primarily by showing how closely the Guttentag-Lindsay model parallels the framework used by Bagehot. Bagehot's objectives in Lombard Street (1873) were to disabuse the politicians and the financial community of the view that the Bank of England was not unique (i.e., that it was "like any other bank"), to show in what ways the Bank was unique, and to draw the implications of the Bank's uniqueness for Bank policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]