[美国中央银行简史]A Brief History of Central Banking.pdfVIP

A Brief History of Central Banking in the United States by Edward Flaherty Source:/banking/central01.html Part I: The First and Second Banks of the United States At its most fundamental level, a central bank is simply a bank which other banks have in common. Small rural banks might each have deposit accounts at a larger urban bank to facilitate their transactions in the city. By this criteria, a financial system might have several central banks. More prosaically, a central bank is usually a government sanctioned bank that has specific duties related to the performance of the macroeconomy. Typically, an official central bank is charged by a central government to control the money supply for the purpose of promoting economic stability. It may have other duties as well, such as some degree of regulatory power over the financial system, operating a check-clearing system, or to perform general banking services for the central government. Most industrialized economies have a central bank. The Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the German Bundesbank, and the United States Federal Reserve are all central banks. While their organizational structures and powers vary, each bank is responsible for controlling its nations money supply. The history of central banking in the United States does not begin with the Federal Reserve. The Bank of the United States received its charter in 1791 from the U.S. Congress and was signed by President Washington. The Banks charter was designed by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, modeling it after the Bank of England, the British central bank. The Bank met with considerable controversy. Agrarian interests were opposed to the Bank on the grounds that they feared it would favor commercial and industrial interests over their own, and that it would promote the use of paper currency at the expense of gold and silver specie