The preceding chapters have examined the setting in which the Federal Reserve operates. We have seen how the System interacts with other actors and the factors that condition those interactions. This chapter focuses on the System's response to its environment in 1972. The case of monetary policy in that year is an especially interesting one, for some have suggested, and many have accepted as true, that Federal Reserve policy during 1972 had a clearly partisan motivation. The most frequently cited source of these allegations is an article by Sanford Rose, a well-known and respected economic writer, published in July 1974 in Fortune magazine. In the opening sentences, Rose bluntly defined the issue: “One of the controversies swirling around the battered Nixon Administration has been of special interest to the economics profession. The issue, in brief, is whether the Federal Reserve Board went on a ‘monetary binge’ in 1972 in order to guarantee President Nixon's reelection.” After devoting over five pages to the argument that monetary growth had been excessive during 1972, Rose answered his own question in the affirmative: yes, policy had been shaped for partisan purposes.