Politika
- Control of Monetary Institutions
- Before 29 May 1903
Politika's issue of 23 October 1926, as read here, carried two very different pieces. In a signed column on the control of monetary institutions, Dr. M. Nedeljković argued that in well-run banks a key ratio should not exceed 3:1, or 3½:1 at most, warning that otherwise even the smallest losses would exhaust the bank's own capital and the damage would fall on depositors and creditors. A memoir of the years leading up to the regicide of 29 May 1903 portrayed the Serbian people as calm and silent, their discontent mute, and judged that most of them regarded King Alexander's 1900 marriage to Draga Mašin as a private matter, a reaction it put down to indifference and perhaps innate apathy.
This edition translates two excerpts transcribed from the page images, because the supplied OCR was too badly corrupted to use: one passage from Dr. M. Nedeljković's column on the control of monetary institutions and one from the memoir 'Before 29 May 1903'. Both pieces continue beyond these excerpts. The memoir excerpt carries no author's name and breaks off mid-sentence. The short item 'Шта се говори?' is split across two tiles with the left half of its lines cut off, parts of the memoir are too faint to read reliably, and lines at the tile edges are truncated. None of that material is translated here.
Translation
Control of Monetary Institutions
In practice, however, it has been shown that in well-run institutions this ratio must not exceed 3:1, and at most 3½:1; otherwise a danger arises for creditors and depositors that, with even the smallest percentage of losses on its business, the bank's capital will not be able to cover the damage, and the damage will have to fall on the depositors and creditors as well.
Before 29 May 1903
And even after the resignation of this cabinet, the people remained calm and gave no visible sign of their inner mood, so that even their discontent — insofar as there was any — remained mute. Even the very event of the King's marriage to Draga Mašin in 1900 seems to have been, for the vast majority of the people, an act chiefly of a private nature, a phenomenon best explained by their indifference and perhaps also by an innate apathy
Context
The night of 29 May 1903
The memoir's title points to the night of 28–29 May 1903 by the Old Style calendar then used in Serbia, which was 10–11 June by the Gregorian calendar. That night army conspirators killed King Alexander I and Queen Draga inside the Stari Dvor palace in Belgrade. They also killed Prime Minister Dimitrije Cincar-Marković, the army minister Milovan Pavlović and the general-adjutant Lazar Petrović. The killings ended the Obrenović dynasty, which had ruled Serbia since the mid-19th century, and the throne then passed to King Peter I of the Karađorđević dynasty. Writing twenty-three years later, the Politika memoir looks back at the country's mood in the years before that night.
How the King's marriage to Draga Mašin was received
The memoir judges that most of the people saw the King's 1900 marriage to Draga Mašin as a largely private matter, and attributes this to indifference or apathy. At the top of the state the marriage caused open conflict. The entire government of Vladan Đorđević resigned in protest, and Interior Minister Đorđe Genčić was jailed for seven years for publicly condemning the engagement. The wedding went ahead on 23 July 1900. Later accounts record that the King's popularity declined further after he married Draga, a former lady-in-waiting of his mother, Queen Natalija. The memoir's observation therefore describes ordinary people, whereas the court and the political class fought openly over the marriage.
Serbia in the last months before the coup
The memoir paints a calm and silent people, but the final months of Alexander's reign included violent moments. On 6 November 1902 the King installed a government headed by General Dimitrije Cincar-Marković. On 23 March 1903 Dimitrije Tucović organised a rally of dissatisfied workers and students, which escalated into open conflict with the police and the army and left six people dead. Knowing that he could not win new elections, the King then staged two coups within one hour. The excerpt does not name the cabinet whose resignation it mentions, so the passage alone cannot show which stretch of these years its picture of calm refers to.
The banking market the column addressed
Dr. M. Nedeljković argues that in a well-run bank the ratio he discusses should not exceed 3:1, or 3½:1 at most, because otherwise small losses would exhaust the bank's own capital and pass on to depositors and creditors. He wrote as banking conditions were settling down. According to the National Bank of Serbia's history, the strengthening of the dinar from 1923 and its stabilisation from May 1925 normalised banking conditions. The same history records that at the end of 1930 there were 642 banks operating in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with a combined principal of three billion dinars, which works out at under five million dinars per bank on average. The column's concern with how far a bank's own capital stood behind its obligations to savers thus addressed a sector that would number 642 banks by the end of 1930.
What happened to depositors in the 1931 crisis
Five years later a banking crisis put Yugoslav depositors' exposure to the test. After the First World War the First Croatian Savings Bank administered 40 percent of all deposits in Zagreb. During the European banking crisis of 1931 the bank faced massive deposit withdrawals in the autumn. At its own request it was placed under a moratorium by decree of 21 April 1932, and the same measure was subsequently extended to other financial institutions under stress. These events came after the article and do not test Nedeljković's particular ratio, but the moratorium on a bank that had held 40 percent of Zagreb's deposits shows how a bank's difficulties could reach Yugoslav savers.
Original
Контрола новчаних завода
У пракси се међутим показало, да код добро вођених завода ова сразмера не сме да пређе 3: 1, а највише 3½: 1; иначе настаје опасност за повериоце и улагаче, да при најмањем проценту губитака на својим пословима, банчин капитал неће моћи покрити штету, него ће она морати пасти и на улагаче и повериоце.
Пред 29 мај 1903
А и после оставке овога кабинета, народ је и даље био миран и никаквим видљивим начином није показивало своје унутрашње расположење, па је чак и само његово незадовољство, - уколико га је било, остајало немо. Још сам догађај Краљеве женидбе са Драгом Машин 1900 г., изгледа, да је за огромни део народа био један акт поглавито приватне природе, каква се појава најбоље може објаснити његовом индиферентношћу а можда и урођеном апатијом