Satirical Print on Plans for Establishing a Girobank

This Dutch wood engraving unfolds in sequential panels the chaos predicted if a state giro bank were established. Citizens deposit savings; officials squander funds on luxuries and speculation; the bank collapses amid scenes of riot and ruin. The print belongs to the Northern European tradition of political satire—inheritor of Hogarth's moral narratives and precursor to mid-century German Bilderbogen broadsheets. Comic sequence here serves financial argument: each panel advances satirical logic through caricatured types—greedy merchants, duped common folk, corrupt bureaucrats—rendered in sharp, acidic line work. The format directly anticipates the visual storytelling that would define early comic strips and picture-story periodicals, merging popular print polemic with sequential narrative form.