front door

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front door

the formal mechanism whereby the BANK OF ENGLAND makes loans to the DISCOUNT HOUSES when the discount houses experience temporary liquidity shortages. In this capacity as LENDER OF LAST RESORT, the Bank of England charges a penal interest rate on the loans that it makes (called BILL DISCOUNTING rate). Compared with BACK DOOR operations, where the Bank of England makes funds available to discount houses at prevailing market interest rates, a front-door operation seeks deliberately to increase interest rates across the whole banking sector. See MONETARY POLICY.

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References in classic literature ?

And snatching a chance piece of billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hall floor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark the line of the footlights.

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But there it ended: from the front door nothing led away but the tracks of the two men who swore that he preceded them.

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So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench's frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way Tom told me to.

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The monkey's face, distorted with passion, appeared at an upper window of the house, and a starred hole in the stained-glass window to the left of 'the front door showed the first steps of his upward path.

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Still holding the shoe in his hand Elmer Cow- ley went through the store, past the two absorbed men, to a glass showcase near the front door.

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Olsen out to look after Bert, and Maggie Donahue went to answer a knock at the front door.

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Toto was well acquainted with the residence of the Tin Woodman and, being assured a joyful welcome, he ran ahead and barked so loudly at the front door that the Tin Woodman heard him and came out in person to see if it were really his old friend Toto.

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You know, the trouble is, Sir," said the plow-horse as the Doctor opened the front door to let him out--"the trouble is that ANYBODY thinks he can doctor animals--just because the animals don't complain.

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We can see it from our living room windows and our front door.

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He had found the front door open, and had followed his ring by walking in unceremoniously.

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I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence.

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Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door, hearing the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching.