Bank credits and acceptances / Henry Harfield

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Bank Credits -- 2. The Trade Transaction -- 3. Definition and Classification -- 4. Documentation Normally Required -- 5. The Bank's Duty to Examine Documents -- 6. Interim Dealings with the Goods -- 7. Incidents of improper performance -- 8. Acceptance -- 9. Creation of Acceptance Credit -- 10. Financing Intangibles, Acceptance, Guaranties, and Performance bond's -- 11. Assignments and Transfers -- 12. The Importance of Uniformity -- 13. Standardization of Procedures -- 14. Insolvency of using Banks -- 15. Accounting and regulation -- 16. The Role of Bank credits and Acceptances.

In recent years, there has been a renascence of imagination in the use of bank credit. A limited range of goods no longer defines the inventory of transactions appropriate for bank financing; bankers' acceptances and letters of credit are used to facilitate an infinite variety of activities. The benefits are evident, but not gratuitous. Adaptation of these venerable instruments to twentieth century economies requires care as well as creativity. Letters of credit are traditionally catalogued according to the purpose for which they are used: import, export, domestic shipment, warehouse and, latterly, performance, guaranty, or stand-by. The convenience of this argotic nomenclature may outweigh its lack of precision, but it distracts attention from the principles of law and sound practice that underlie both the classic and the contemporary bank credit. Dangerous at any time, such inattention may be especially costly in current circumstances. As bank credit is deployed over unfamiliar ground, the risk of confusion is magnified, and where confusion exists, loss is predictable, for confusion is seldom rectified unless the stimulus of loss is present.