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EXCESS RESERVES: The amount of bank reserves over and above those that the Federal Reserve System requires a bank to keep. Excess reserves are what banks use to make loans. If a bank has more excess reserves, then it can make more loans. This is a key part of the Fed's ability to control the money supply. Using open market operations, the Fed can add to, or subtract from, the excess reserves held by banks. If the Fed, for example, adds to excess reserves, then banks can make more loans. Banks make these loans by adding to their customers' checking account balances. This is of some importance, because checking account balances are an major part of the economy's money supply. In essence, controlling these excess reserves is the Fed's number one method of "printing" money without actually printing money.
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OPEN MARKET OPERATIONS The buying and selling of U.S. Treasury securities by the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) as a means of a controlling the money supply. An increase in the money supply is achieved when the Fed buys securities. A decrease in the money supply is achieved when the Fed sells securities. The Federal Open Market Committee is the specific component of the Federal Reserve System that is charged with open market operations. Open market operations are the most important of the three monetary policy tools that the Fed can use, in principle, to control the money supply. The other two are the discount rate and reserve requirements.
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General Electric is the only stock from the original 1896 Dow Jones Industrial Average remaining in the current index.
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"Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires...courage." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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BOJ Bank of Japan
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