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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: of business would be possible. More than one bona fide banker, backed
up by a bona fide government, has induced the hardest-headed men on
'Change to take up stock which is bound to fall within a given time.
You have seen better than that. Have you not seen stock created with
the concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon older stock,
so as to keep things going and tide over the difficulty? These
operations were more or less like Nucingen's settlements."
"The thing may look queer on a small scale," said Blondet, "but on a
large we call it finance. There are high-handed proceedings criminal
between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any
number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a
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