The Bundesbank Act says that the German central bank, in exercising its powers, is von Weisungen der Bundesregierung unabhängig, independent of instructions from the federal government. In 1956 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer attacked an interest rate increase by the Bundesbank’s predecessor in a speech to industrialists in Cologne. Das Fallbeil trifft die kleinen Leute. The guillotine falls on the little people. Later, according to a Bundesbank president of the time, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said at almost every meeting with the bank: Sie werden doch nicht schon wieder die Zinsen erhöhen! Surely you are not going to raise interest rates again!