Federal Reserve Bank Services history

Following the veto, support for the bank dwindled and the bank closed in 1841.

Following a time of financial troubles, for the country, the National Banking Act of 1863 was passed and signed into law by Abraham Lincoln.

In 1907, a particularly severe panic ended only when a private individual, the financier J.P. Morgan, used his personal wealth to arrange emergency loans for banks.

30 reports later, the Commission ultimately proposed the establishment of a national reserve association in 1912.

The Federal Reserve System was created on December 23, 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law.

Soon after the Organization Committee announced its decision, representatives from five Seventh District banks gathered on May 18, 1914, for the formal signing of the Chicago Fed's organization certificate.

The Federal Reserve Board allowed banks in 25 Wisconsin counties to shift to the Seventh District in October 1916.)

When the United States declared war on Germany and joined the First World War in April 1917, the Reserve Banks were authorized to handle the financial operations associated with the war.

The Branch opened for business on March 18, 1918.

From 41 employees on opening day to 1,200 by 1919, the Bank had outgrown its office spaces—at the time scattered throughout the Loop in downtown Chicago.

By 1920, the Branch began to exercise all of the functions of a Reserve Bank except for note issuance and a few minor tasks.

As the Fed Banks increased their research efforts, they became increasingly aware of a potentially powerful new monetary policy tool — open market operations. It was not until 1921, when the Reserve Banks began to buy and sell government securities to build their earnings, that the potential effect of open market operations was fully realized.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago was not created until 1922 during the Roaring Twenties, a post-war surge of economic prosperity that was experienced nationwide.

In 1923, the Federal Reserve Board established the Federal Open Market Investment Committee, which was comprised of the governors of the Chicago Fed and four other Reserve Banks and instructed to monitor the state of national credit.

1926 The eighth-annual employee dinner and dance in the Chicago Fed's dining room and gymnasium.

Strong wrote to McDougal in August 1927 exhorting the Chicago Bank to join a System-wide effort to ease credit.

In February 1929, the Federal Reserve Board, as part of its unsuccessful campaign to curtail speculation, decried the "excessive amounts of the country's credit absorbed in speculative security loans."14

The Fed responded by easing credit through open market operations and reductions in the discount rate, a policy it continued through the first half of 1931.

During the first nine months of 1932, the Reserve Banks bought an unprecedented $1 billion of securities, but this additional liquidity was quickly absorbed by the parched banking system.18

The nationwide economic panic peaked in March of 1933 as Franklin D. Roosevelt took presidential office.

Prior to the enactment of the Banking Act of 1935, the chief executive officer of each Federal Reserve Bank held the title of governor.

1F. Cyril James, 1938, The Growth of Chicago Banks, New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Chicago Fed found itself once again responsible for coordinating the Seventh District's bond drives.

1942 On September 1, 1942, the Federal Reserve Bank took over the handling of sales analysis of War Savings Bonds which was formerly handled by the Treasury Department.

1947 Officers Walter Mueller(left) and William Miller in front of the Bank's cash vault.

1949 Members of a choral group perform in the second-floor lobby during holiday festivities.

1955 Kathryn E. Lee named assistant cashier, becoming the first female officer at the Bank.

1962 Chicago Fed operators had to learn every number in the building as well as an entirely new telephone system.

1964 Annual Conference on Bank Structure and Competition Chicago Fed hosts its first conference to serve as a forum for academics, regulators and industry participants to debate current issues affecting the financial services industry.

1967 Commuters walk down snow-covered LaSalle Street following the historic blizzard of January 27, 1967.

1969 Buddie J. Belford was appointed first woman Assistant Vice President, in Personnel.

1970 In the early 1970s, the Chicago Fed coordinated the newly established Interdistrict Transportation System (ITS), an air transport service that provided overnight delivery of checks.

1971 Charlotte Scott named first African American officer at the Bank.

During a period of very high inflation, Congress enacted The Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977.

The very next year, Congress passed The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, which established the second policy goal as full employment.

After an emergency FOMC meeting on October 6, 1979, Chairman Paul Volcker announced that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy efforts would focus on reaching target levels of bank reserves through open market operations.

The Midwest lagged behind until that year, when its economic activity once again outpaced the rest of the nation for the first time since 1980.

1-15; Gary Gorton, “Clearinghouses and the Origin of Central Banking in the United States,” Journal of Economic History, June 1985, vol.

Jeffrey A. Miron, “Financial Panics, the Seasonality of the Nominal Interest Rate, and the Founding of the Fed,” American Economic Review, March 1986, vol.

277-283; and Gary Gorton and Donald Mullineaux, “The Joint Production of Confidence: Endogenous Regulation and Nineteenth Century Commercial-Bank Clearinghouses,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, November 1987, vol.

1990 Chicago Fed Employee Activity Council (EAC) members at the EAC card party.

1994 First woman Senior Vice President Nancy M. Goodman became in charge of Community and Information Services.

1997 First annual International Banking Conference held.

The Goals of United States Monetary Policy, by John Judd and Glenn D. Rudebusch, FRBSF Economic Letter 1999-04, January 29, 1999.

The Branch, built in the Classical Revival style, closes in 2004 and is listed on the National Register.

2005 The victory parade passes in front of the Bank in October after the Chicago White Sox swept the Houston Astros 4-0 in the baseball World Series.

2007 - | Charles L. Evans Title: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of ChicagoCharles L. Evans began his term as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on September 1, 2007.

Similarly, the loan made in connection with the failure of Bear Stearns in March 2008 was offset through sales of Treasury securities.

Recovery started, albeit slowly, in June of 2009.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act allowed for Systemically Important Financial Institutions to be overseen by the Fed, created the Orderly Liquidation Authority for the FDIC to safely deconstruct failing firms, and required large institutions to create detailed plans in case of failure, called living wills.

See Jeffrey M. Lacker, “Perspectives on Monetary and Credit Policy,” Speech to the Shadow Open Market Committee Symposium, New York, NY, November 20, 2012.

See Jeffrey M. Lacker, “Economics and the Federal Reserve After the Crisis.” Speech at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, February 12, 2013.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, and the Chicago Fed instituted a mandatory work-from-home situation effective the following day.

The Federal Reserve announced plans to inject $1.5 trillion into money markets and greatly lower interest rates—both of which the Fed upheld and supplemented into 2021—but the nation continued into recession.