In the second half of 1953 the United States, for the first time, risked exceeding the statutory limit on Treasury debt. This paper describes how Congress, the White House, and Treasury officials dealt with the looming crisis—by deferring and reducing expenditures, monetizing “free” gold...

Following the Treasury–Federal Reserve Accord of March 3, 1951, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) focused on free reserves—the difference between excess reserves (reserve deposits in excess of reserve requirements) and borrowed reserves—as the touchstone of U.S. monetary policy....

This paper presents a history of the primary dealer system from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. The paper focuses on two formal programs: the “recognized” dealer program adopted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1939 and the “qualified” dealer program adopted by the Federal...

The U.S. Treasury announced in August 2005 that it is exploring whether to provide a backstop securities lending facility for U.S. Treasury securities. This paper examines the conceptual basis for such a facility by comparing the market for borrowing and lending Treasury securities to the market...

Modern money and capital markets are not free-form bazaars where participants are left alone to contract as they choose, but rather are circumscribed by a variety of statutes, regulations, and behavioral norms. This paper examines the circumstances surrounding the introduction of a set of norms...

Ever since the emergence of regular and predictable issuance of coupon-bearing Treasury debt in the 1970s, thirty years has marked the outer boundary of Treasury bond maturities. However, longer-term bonds were not unknown in earlier years. Seven such bonds, including one with a forty-year term,...