(See Cover) // you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
—Ben Franklin
Through the palm-decked lobbies of Miami Beach's best hotels this week strolled 6,000 men who know the value of money. For the delegates to the annual convention of the American Bankers Association, the subject came as natural as breathing. Among them there was a strong note of worry. Reason: money has become so tight that the situation has raised grave questions for the bankers—and for the U.S. How much higher will interest rates go? How long will the pinch last? Will money become so tight that it will"choke off the boom?
At Miami Beach there were opinions to fit every account. Said Louis E. Corrington Jr., president of Chicago's Southmoor Bank & Trust Co.: "Right now, money is the tightest I have ever seen it. It will be worse after the steel strike is over and companies start building inventories and go to the banks to borrow." Said Russell H. Eichman, vice president of Cleveland's Central National Bank: "If the steel strike requires a slowing up of auto sales, that in itself will automatically ease the tight money situation." Said Scott L. Moore, president of the American National Bank of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: "I think the tight money situation will last another six to eight months. Right now merchants in my town are borrowing money for income tax purposes."
The man whose views were most eagerly sought is a tall (6 ft. i in.), slim (160 Ibs.), handsome New Yorker named Henry Clay Alexander. At 57, Alexander is chairman of Manhattan's Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. and perhaps the nation's most prestigious banker. He is heir to the famed tradition of the House of Morgan, which created huge industrial firms, bailed out whole governments and at the turn of the century all but controlled the financial destiny of the U.S. Morgan is still a name to conjure with. Its famed building at 23 Wall St. is known throughout the financial world as "The Corner." Said an international banker with an account at Alexander's bank: "When I cash a check abroad, they never look at my signature; they look at the name Morgan and cash it immediately."
Henry Alexander's prestige does not depend on tradition alone; it rests on what he has done to rescue the House of Morgan from decline and restore it once more to the first ranks of U.S. finance. Less than a year ago, J. P. Morgan & Co. was in tenth place among New York commercial banks and 28th in the U.S. It was hard pressed for enough money to lend its rapidly increasing number of customers. Then Alexander pulled off a coup that Wall Street dubbed "Jonah swallowing the whale." He worked out a merger with the much larger Guaranty Trust Co., became the head of the fifth largest U.S. bank.-Overnight his bank's capital funds jumped from $89 million to $512 million. Now Alexander is expanding his business and, as an adviser to the U.S.Treasury and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is considered a spokesman for bankers on U.S. fiscal policy.