WWII and After

President Harry Truman meets with George Marshall, Economic Cooperation Administration chief Paul Hoffman, and ECA roving ambassador W. Averell Harriman to discuss the Marshall Plan.

The Federal Reserve pegged interest rates at a low level during World War II in order to facilitate the financing of government debt and enforced that peg for six years after the war's end.
Read on

Employment Act

President Truman signed the Act in 1946 in the aftermath of WWII

Bretton Woods Created

A new international monetary system was forged in 1944

This photo was captioned "A business man of Japanese ancestry confers with a representative of the Federal Reserve Bank at Wartime Civil Control Administration station to arrange disposition of his financial affairs prior to evacuation." National Archives and Records Administration Photograph No. <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/536054">210-G-A79</a>, Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, 1942-1945; Record Group 210: Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1941-1989.

The Federal Reserve's Interactions with Japanese Americans during WWII

As part of the war effort, the Fed was assigned a duty well outside of its normal activities.

War bond rally to buy bonds, February 1944.

WWII and Its Aftermath

Monetary policy fundamentally changed during the period of 1941 to 1951

U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall and British Admiral Sir Dudley Pound talk at luncheon held for British and American naval chiefs at the Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., January 17, 1942

The Fed's Role During WWII

The Federal Reserve supported the war effort in several ways