History
Bankers' acceptances date back to the 12th century when they emerged as a means to finance uncertain trade, as banks bought bills of exchange at a discount. During the 18th and 19th centuries, there was an active market for sterling bankers' acceptances in London. When the United States Federal Reserve was formed in 1913, one of its purposes was to promote a domestic bankers' acceptance market to rival London's to boost US trade and enhance the competitive position of US banks. National banks were authorized to accept time drafts, and the Federal Reserve was authorized to purchase certain eligible bankers' acceptances, but today the US central bank no longer buys banker's acceptances (but instead buys mostly US government bonds from a Primary dealer).
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)