William H Scherping

Review of Federal Reserve Bank of New Yo...

Summer of 1960 I worked as a 'runner" [ie; messeng...

Summer of 1960 I worked as a 'runner" [ie; messenger] for a Wall Street firm that specialized in trading US Treasury Bills, Notes and Bonds. Every Monday the Fed held an auction of said securities, mostly 90 day "T" Bills. A small number of Primary Dealers (about 12) were allowed to submit bids. These dealers would talk to each other via telephone to get a sense of "the Market" The bids, on hand written cards, had to be in at a special Tellers Window on the first floor by 1:30 pm at which time the window was physically closed. The traders were I worked waited until the last minute to complete their bids and then handed them to me. An elevator was waiting to take me to the ground floor. I had to hit the street (Broad Street) running, from Exchange Place, past Wall, Pine, and Cedar Streets to Liberty Street were the Fed Building sits. I was almost hit by a taxi more than a few times on the way. A number of we runner would flop to the floor after delivering our bids {no benches} until the guards kicked us out, Great memories.

As an aside, someone commented that the Fed is on 3rd Street. There is no 3rd Street in the Wall Street area.