Word: hike
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...raising the U.S. discount rate from 3-s% to 4% in response to a hike in the British discount rate-the interest that central banks charge their members-the Federal Reserve Board showed how closely interwoven have become economies that are oceans apart. By helping to rescue the faltering British pound (see THE WORLD), the U.S.'s money managers demonstrated how tightly bound together are the fates of the Western world's two major currencies. "It was an orderly operation all the way," said William McChesney Martin Jr., chairman of the Federal Reserve, "and showed that the bankers...
...beyond that, said Federal Reserve Chairman Martin in an unprecedented press conference, the hike was "an insurance measure" designed to prove "that we are ready to defend and preserve the dollar." The U.S. money managers feared that European speculators, many of whom received dollars for the pounds they were unloading, might be tempted to convert those dollars into other currencies unless the U.S. demonstrated that it intended to keep the dollar stable. The U.S. did just this by raising the discount rate, thus averted possible speculative pressure on the dollar. In so acting, Martin and his governors placed the nation...
...Shame, for Shame." Others were not so resigned. "For shame, for shame!" cried Congressman Wright Patman, chairman of the House Banking Committee, who went on to predict "a marked slowdown in our economic growth" as a result of the hike. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. executive council complained that the move would discourage borrowing by consumers and business alike. Coming at a time when many businessmen were beginning to wonder aloud whether the U.S.'s 45-month economic upswing could continue much beyond mid-1965, the discount-rate hike also raised fears among many businessmen of a recurrence of 1960, when...
...such fears Chairman Martin had a ready answer: the Federal Reserve, he said, will continue its present policy of "cautious ease," preventing the rate hike from hurting the economy by buying Government securities in the open market and thus pumping money into the banking system. In Martin's view, the hike would not raise loan or mortgage rates, or affect the economy: "I think that it would have a negligible effect on the money supply." To attract more savings and further increase the supply of money, the Federal Reserve simultaneously allowed banks to increase their maximum interest on savings...
...price for the protection of the dollar-and only time would tell just what that cost to the economy would be - it was also moved by self-interest in coming massively to the aid of the pound, which continued to weaken de spite Britain's rate hike. Had Britain been forced to devalue the pound, the resulting chaos might not only have snarled world trade and weakened the West, but would almost certainly have undermined the dollar as well. It was clear to the Americans that they had to act just as resolutely in defense of the pound...