Central bank
The generic name given to a country's primary monetary authority which performs a number of key functions: issuing the nation's currency; regulating the supply of credit in the economy; managing the external value of its currency in the foreign exchange markets; holding deposits which represent reserves of other banks and other central banks; acting as fiscal agent for the central government, when the government sells new issues of securities to finance its operations; and attempting to maintain an orderly market in these securities by actively participating in the government securities market. Major central banks are the Federal Reserve in USA (Fed), the Bank of England (Boe), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ).
