The Central Bank

The central bank has two very important functions within the economic system of a country. The first is to preserve the value of the currency and maintain price stability, its primary tool for this purpose is the management of interest rates. When using the gold standard, the value of banknotes issued by central banks was expressed in terms of gold content, or possibly someone else, the bank tried to maintain certain levels over time.
The second is to maintain financial system stability, since the central bank is the bank of banks, their clients are not ordinary people or specific companies, but the State and existing banks within the territory of the nation to which it belongs. The central bank takes deposits from its customers and keeps them in accounts which they have in him. With these transactions for clients' accounts with other banks through the payment and clearing systems (SNCF, TARGET2), as an individual in a commercial bank account used for transactions with another individual. In turn, the central bank also provides loans to banks with liquidity problems, or to other states.
Normally, in circumstances of war, governments in a country solve their financial needs with its own central bank.
Central banks are in
* Custodians and administrators of the gold and currency reserves;
* Providers of legal tender;
* Perpetrators of exchange rate policies;
* Responsible for monetary and price stability;
* Service treasury services and financial agents of the Public Debt of national governments;
* Lender of last resort (banks banks);
* Promoters of the proper functioning of financial system stability and payments systems;