IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mcb/jmoncb/v29y1997i2p135-53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From Obscurity to Notoriety: A Biography of the Exchange Stabilization Fund

Author

Listed:
  • Schwartz, Anna J

Abstract

The U.S. Treasury's $20 billion loan to Mexico in January 1995 from the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) brought to public notice the fund that had functioned in obscurity since its authorization by the Gold Reserve Act of January 31, 1934. The design of the ESF, as set forth in the statute, contributed to its obscurity. Its stated mission was to stabilize the exchange value of the dollar, but it has also assumed a role that had no mandate, that of lender to favored countries. ESF's intervention activities and the Federal Reserve's warehousing of ESF foreign currency assets are questionable. A statistical profile of the ESF accounts for the growth of its working balance from $200 million in 1934 to $42.6 billion in assets in 1995. Copyright 1997 by Ohio State University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Schwartz, Anna J, 1997. "From Obscurity to Notoriety: A Biography of the Exchange Stabilization Fund," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(2), pages 135-153, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:29:y:1997:i:2:p:135-53
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gold, Joseph, 1988. "Mexico and the development of the practice of the International Monetary Fund," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 16(10), pages 1127-1142, October.
    2. Edwin M. Truman, 1996. "The Mexican peso crisis: implications for international finance," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 82(Mar), pages 199-209, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kenneth D. Garbade, 2016. "The first debt ceiling crisis," Staff Reports 783, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Michael D. Bordo & Owen F. Humpage & Anna J. Schwartz, 2010. "U.S. Foreign-Exchange-Market Intervention and the Early Dollar Float: 1973 - 1981," NBER Working Papers 16647, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Charles Calomiris & David Wheelock, 1998. "Was the Great Depression a Watershed for American Monetary Policy?," NBER Chapters, in: The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century, pages 23-65, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Mr. James M. Boughton, 2006. "American in the Shadows: Harry Dexter White and the Design of the International Monetary Fund," IMF Working Papers 2006/006, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 1999. "Under what circumstances, past and present, have international rescues of countries in financial distress been successful?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 683-708, August.
    6. Michael D. Bordo & Owen Humpage & Anna J. Schwartz, 2007. "The historical origins of US exchange market intervention policy," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(2), pages 109-132.
    7. Rik Hafer, 1999. "Against the tide: Malcolm Bryan and the introduction of monetary aggregate targets," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 84(Q1), pages 20-37.
    8. Faudot, Adrien & Nenovsky, Nikolay, 2024. "Edgard Milhaud And The Case For Establishing An International Clearing Union In The 1930s: A Forgotten Forerunner Of Keynes?," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 399-420, September.
    9. -, 2022. "Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and the COVID-19 crisis," Coediciones, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), number 47856 edited by Eclac.
    10. J. Bradford DeLong & Barry Eichengreen, 2001. "Between Meltdown and Moral Hazard: The International Monetary and Financial Policies of the Clinton Administration," NBER Working Papers 8443, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Michael D. Bordo & Owen F. Humpage & Anna J. Schwartz, 2016. "On the Evolution of US Foreign-Exchange-Market Intervention: Thesis, Theory, and Institutions," NBER Chapters, in: Strained Relations: US Foreign-Exchange Operations and Monetary Policy in the Twentieth Century, pages 1-26, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Robert L. Hetzel, 1997. "The case for a monetary rule in a constitutional democracy," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 45-66.
    13. Steffen Murau & Armin Haas & Andrei Guter-Sandu, 2024. "Monetary architecture and the Green Transition," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 56(2), pages 382-401, March.
    14. Michael Bordo & Anna J. Schwartz, 2001. "From the Exchange Stabilization Fund to the International Monetary Fund," NBER Working Papers 8100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alvis K. Lo, 2014. "Do Declines in Bank Health Affect Borrowers’ Voluntary Disclosures? Evidence from International Propagation of Banking Shocks," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 541-581, May.
    2. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 2000. "Measuring real economic effects of bailouts: historical perspectives on how countries in financial distress have fared with and without bailouts," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 81-167, December.
    3. Joseph Bisignano, 1996. "Varieties of monetary operating procedures: balancing monetary objectives with market efficiency," BIS Working Papers 35, Bank for International Settlements.
    4. Michael Bordo & Anna J. Schwartz, 2001. "From the Exchange Stabilization Fund to the International Monetary Fund," NBER Working Papers 8100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Merve Osmanbeyoglu & Nukhet Dogan & M. Hakan Berument, 2022. "Exchange rate regime, world oil prices and the Mexican economy," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 159-178, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:29:y:1997:i:2:p:135-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-2879 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.