Word: chases
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...days; once, in 1958, it took a week for the pacemaking banks to fall in line with a lower rate. But for a fortnight some 40 of the nation's biggest banks have, to their consternation, found themselves in an unexpected battle over "the prime" with Chase Manhattan, New York City's biggest and the nation's second largest bank...
...Chase dropped a bomb on Jan. 26 by cutting its prime rate from 6% to 5½% -the first such drop in six years. Though delighted, even Administration economists were surprised by the size of the slash. "Too much, too soon," chorused other bankers, who next day began cutting their rates half as much, to 5¾%, in a half bow yet pointed rebuke to Chase. Then they sat back to watch loan demand swamp Chase with more business than it could handle...
Quiet Pressure. Through last week, no such stampede had arisen. Instead, some companies quietly began feeding deposits into Chase Manhattan, hoping thereby to pressure other banks to slice their prime rate to Chase's 5½% level. At a news conference, Chase Chairman George Champion casually noted that his bank had about $1 billion in cash and other quick assets to meet any surge in loan demand. By week's end, Chase had withstood two weeks of the split-level struggle, and many businessmen were betting that the bank would emerge the victor, thus raising its prestige...
...tight-money thaw began as the Bank of England cut its lending rate from the crisis level of 7% to 61%, and sent bank messengers sprinting about London's City to spread the news. Within hours, Chase Manhattan Bank, New York City's largest and the second biggest in the U.S., lowered its prime rate -the minimum interest charged for loans to the biggest customers-from 6% to 51%. Explained President David Rockefeller: "While loan demand is still strong, it is less than it was a year ago." Though the British action had been widely anticipated, Chase Manhattan...
Pleased. President Johnson, who has been pressuring for a substantial easing in monetary policies, let it be known he was "pleased." But many a moneyman growled that the Chase's rate cut seemed too much, too soon. "A case of acting without regard to supply and demand," insisted President Mills Lane Jr. of Atlanta's Citizens & Southern National Bank. Fitting deeds to the dogma, other commercial banks, led by Manhattan's First National City, next day cut their prime rates only half as much, from 6% to 5½%. If the rate settles across...