Bank of the Empire

The Bank of the Empire, also called the Imperial Galactic Bank or simply Imperial Bank, was the of the  and the backbone of 's financial system during the reign of. Besides having a monopoly on issuing the, among other duties, in its role as a central bank, it also the largest organization that offered consumer banking services. Due to its influence and size, the Bank of the Empire had immense influence over the rest of the galaxy's commercial banking system and, by extent, the, overseeing it on behalf of the Emperor.

History
With the upheaval caused by the and the strained economy in the late, shortly after the  the new  established a central bank to manage the state's monetary policy. One of Emperor Palpatine's first decrees was to nationalize many of the powerful corporate conglomerates as part of an effort to stabilize the galactic economy, among them the, which was placed under government control. Elements of these nationalized entities were used to establish the first Bank of the Empire, which was given the status of being the sole issuer of the Galactic Credit by Imperial decree in 19 BBY.

One of the earliest actions of the new Bank was to "defend the Credit" by regulating the issuing of other currencies, limiting it in order to promote usage of the new Empire's currency, and setting a fixed exchange rate for the Imperial Credit against other major currencies in circulation. Local were required to be backed by a fixed rate of a bank's holdings of the Imperial Credit, bringing them under control. Since the IGBC and other popular financial systems effectively came under the Imperial government's management, the Imperial Bank was able to force the rest of the galactic banking sector to accept these policies.

With these policies the galactic economy stabilized in the early years of the Emperor's reign after the wild years of the Clone Wars. Being the main financial institution in the galaxy also allowed the Bank to inflate the Imperial Credit as much as it wished, which was backed by both the vast amounts of strategic resources and valuable metals that the Empire had stocked, as well as the might of the. It was thanks to this that the Emperor and his advisors never had to worry about the monetary cost of the numerous military and research projects that they embarked on, as the Imperial Bank simply created more quintillions of credits when the government needed them.

This state continued until the outbreak of the in 2 BBY, which, while initially having little effect, brought more economic instability with the destruction of the. The Bank did its best to stabilize the macroeconomic situation in the galaxy during the conflict as it escalated. In order to help with the war effort the Imperial Bank also took efforts to make the 's logistics and finances as difficult as possible. The Bank blocked the Alliance from using its vast financial system, forcing them to resort to the black market and smaller, shadier banks while making transactions risky for them. It also declared that the had no value and, unofficially, tried to undermine it by working with  to flood the black market with counterfeit Alliance Credits.

Activities
In its role as the central bank, the Bank of the Empire was the sole organization that had permission to mint the Imperial Credit. It helped the Imperial carry out monetary policy in various ways, such as by processing tax payments from countless taxpayers on behalf of the. The Imperial Bank remits its income and profits to the Finance Ministry.

As the largest financial management system in the galaxy, the Bank of the Empire processed countless trillions of individual transactions every day,

Leadership
The Bank of the Empire was managed by a Governor, who commanded a board of directors.

Behind the scenes
The author first got the idea for this article upon stumbling onto a on Wookieepedia with the same title. He then researched it further and discovered a on a similar entity, and seeing that there was little development on it, decided to make a fanon article expanding on the subject. In addition this article has several real world inspirations, including the, the , and the. This article has various references to them in different ways.