Fed Uses Record $11.9 Billion to Rein In Dollar
NEW YORK — U.S. authorities, in a mammoth effort to curb a surging dollar, sold a record $11.92 billion in currency intervention from May through July, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Wednesday.
The U.S. authorities sold $7.24 billion in exchange for Japanese yen and $4.68 billion for West German marks in the largest intervention for a three-month period since records were begun in 1973.
“All of the intervention we did can be taken as an indication that we wanted to reduce the pressure on the dollar and bring about greater exchange rate stability,” said Sam Cross, executive vice president at the New York Fed.
The New York Fed reports quarterly to Congress on its intervention, conducted on behalf of the Federal Reserve system and the Treasury.
“We were not driving it (the dollar) down as much as keeping it from rising,” Cross told reporters.
The intervention size--which exceeded the previous three-month record of $6.86 billion bought from November, 1978, through January, 1979--did not reflect any change in U.S policy but rather a shift in market activity, Cross said.
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