At the same time, other policies such as fiscal and, more importantly, structural have a significant role. We should not, after all, forget the classic lesson of Jan Tinbergen that there need to be just as many instruments as there are targets.
At that time, checks were used far differently than they are today, and represented a primary means of making interbank wholesale transfers. Sixty years later, in the 1970s, the Federal Reserve’s early participation in and subsidization of the automated clearing house system provided the impetus to launch that new nationwide electronic payment mechanism.