ABSTRACT
This chapter contains only approximate estimates of French investments in other countries. France alone has been consistently a net creditor on an appreciable scale. During the war the franc had been supported in the face of a huge import surplus of merchandise by means of credits from Great Britain and the United States. At the beginning of 1920 the short-term credits granted to France amounted to about 3,000 million francs, and during that year they increased by over 12,000 millions, considerable sums being deposited in French banks and with French merchants or used for the purchase of short-dated securities. The bulk of the resources was placed in foreign banks, left in merchant and credit institutions abroad, or hoarded in foreign currencies, Great Britain, Holland, Switzerland, and the United States being the chief recipients. Indeed, foreign investment as a whole has never been regarded with such favour in France as in England or America.
