Download or read book Inside the Fed revised edition written by Stephen H. Axilrod and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's account of the workings of the Federal Reserve, thoroughly updated to encompass the Fed's action (and inaction) during the recent financial meltdown. Stephen Axilrod is the ultimate Federal Reserve insider. He worked at the Fed's Board of Governors for more than thirty years and after that in private markets and as a consultant on monetary policy. With Inside the Fed, he offers his unique perspective on the inner workings of the Federal Reserve System during the last fifty years. This new, post-financial meltdown edition offers his assessment of the Fed's action (and inaction) during the crisis and expanded coverage of the Fed in the Bernanke era. Great leadership in monetary policy, Axilrod says, is determined not by pure economic sophistication but by the ability to push through political and social barriers to achieve a paradigm shift in policy—and by the courage and bureaucratic moxie to pull it off.
Download or read book The Federal Reserve System Purposes and Functions written by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.
Download or read book In FED We Trust written by David Wessel and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Whatever it takes” That was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s vow as the worst financial panic in more than fifty years gripped the world and he struggled to avoid the once unthinkable: a repeat of the Great Depression. Brilliant but temperamentally cautious, Bernanke researched and wrote about the causes of the Depression during his career as an academic. Then when thrust into a role as one of the most important people in the world, he was compelled to boldness by circumstances he never anticipated. The president of the United States can respond instantly to a missile attack with America’s military might, but he cannot respond to a financial crisis with real money unless Congress acts. The Fed chairman can. Bernanke did. Under his leadership the Fed spearheaded the biggest government intervention in more than half a century and effectively became the fourth branch of government, with no direct accountability to the nation’s voters. Believing that the economic catastrophe of the 1930s was largely the fault of a sluggish and wrongheaded Federal Reserve, Bernanke was determined not to repeat that epic mistake. In this penetrating look inside the most powerful economic institution in the world, David Wessel illuminates its opaque and undemocratic inner workings, while revealing how the Bernanke Fed led the desperate effort to prevent the world’s financial engine from grinding to a halt. In piecing together the fullest, most authoritative, and alarming picture yet of this decisive moment in our nation’s history, In Fed We Trust answers the most critical questions. Among them: • What did Bernanke and his team at the Fed know–and what took them by surprise? Which of their actions stretched–or even ripped through–the Fed’s legal authority? Which chilling numbers and indicators made them feel they had no choice? • What were they thinking at pivotal moments during the race to sell Bear Stearns, the unsuccessful quest to save Lehman Brothers, and the virtual nationalization of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac? What were they saying to one another when, as Bernanke put it to Wessel: “We came very close to Depression 2.0”? • How well did Bernanke, former treasury secretary Hank Paulson, and then New York Fed president Tim Geithner perform under intense pressure? • How did the crisis prompt a reappraisal of the once-impregnable reputation of Alan Greenspan? In Fed We Trust is a breathtaking and singularly perceptive look at a historic episode in American and global economic history.
Download or read book Inside the Fed written by Stephen H. Axilrod and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ultimate Federal Reserve insider offers insights into the inner workings of the Fed over the past fifty years. Stephen Axilrod is the ultimate Federal Reserve insider. He worked at the Fed's Board of Governors for over thirty years and after that in private markets and as a consultant on monetary policy. With Inside the Fed, he offers his unique perspective on the inner workings of the Federal Reserve System during the last fifty years—writing about personalities as much as policy—based on his knowledge and observations of every Fed chairman since 1951. Axilrod's discussion focuses on how the personalities of the various chairmen affected their capacity for leadership. He describes, for example, Arthur Burns's response to political pressure from the Nixon White House and Paul Volcker's radical shift to an anti-inflationary policy at the end of the 1970s—a transition in which Axilrod himself played a crucial role. As for the Greenspan years, Axilrod points to the unintended effects of the Fed's newfound "garrulousness" (the plethora of announcements and hints about policy intentions)—one of which was the Fed's loss of credibility in the aftermath of the chairman's 1996 comment about "irrational exuberance." And Axilrod incisively outlines the problems—including the subprime mess—inherited from Greenspan by the current chairman, Ben Bernanke. Great leadership in monetary policy, Axilrod says, is determined not by pure economic sophistication but by the ability to push through political and social barriers to achieve a paradigm shift in policy—and by the courage and bureaucratic moxie to pull it off.
Download or read book End the Fed written by Ron Paul and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the post-meltdown world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve. Most people think of the Fed as an indispensable institution without which the country's economy could not properly function. But in End the Fed, Ron Paul draws on American history, economics, and fascinating stories from his own long political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional. It is inflating currency today at nearly a Weimar or Zimbabwe level, a practice that threatens to put us into an inflationary depression where $100 bills are worthless. What most people don't realize is that the Fed -- created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia -- is actually working against their own personal interests. Congressman Paul's urgent appeal to all citizens and officials tells us where we went wrong and what we need to do fix America's economic policy for future generations.
Download or read book The Federal Reserve written by S. H. Axilrod and published by . This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Reserve: What Everyone Needs to Know is about how things work in practice for the Fed: how it makes decisions, what actions it takes, and the actual effects it has on the economy and society.
Download or read book Fed Up written by Danielle DiMartino Booth and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Federal Reserve insider pulls back the curtain on the secretive institution that controls America’s economy After correctly predicting the housing crash of 2008 and quitting her high-ranking Wall Street job, Danielle DiMartino Booth was surprised to find herself recruited as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the regional centers of our complicated and widely misunderstood Federal Reserve System. She was shocked to discover just how much tunnel vision, arrogance, liberal dogma, and abuse of power drove the core policies of the Fed. DiMartino Booth found a cabal of unelected academics who made decisions without the slightest understanding of the real world, just a slavish devotion to their theoretical models. Over the next nine years, she and her boss, Richard Fisher, tried to speak up about the dangers of Fed policies such as quantitative easing and deeply depressed interest rates. But as she puts it, “In a world rendered unsafe by banks that were too big to fail, we came to understand that the Fed was simply too big to fight.” Now DiMartino Booth explains what really happened to our economy after the fateful date of December 8, 2008, when the Federal Open Market Committee approved a grand and unprecedented experiment: lowering interest rates to zero and flooding America with easy money. As she feared, millions of individuals, small businesses, and major corporations made rational choices that didn’t line up with the Fed’s “wealth effect” models. The result: eight years and counting of a sluggish “recovery” that barely feels like a recovery at all. While easy money has kept Wall Street and the wealthy afloat and thriving, Main Street isn’t doing so well. Nearly half of men eighteen to thirty-four live with their parents, the highest level since the end of the Great Depression. Incomes are barely increasing for anyone not in the top ten percent of earners. And for those approaching or already in retirement, extremely low interest rates have caused their savings to stagnate. Millions have been left vulnerable and afraid. Perhaps worst of all, when the next financial crisis arrives, the Fed will have no tools left for managing the panic that ensues. And then what? DiMartino Booth pulls no punches in this exposé of the officials who run the Fed and the toxic culture they created. She blends her firsthand experiences with what she’s learned from dozens of high-powered market players, reams of financial data, and Fed documents such as transcripts of FOMC meetings. Whether you’ve been suspicious of the Fed for decades or barely know anything about it, as DiMartino Booth writes, “Every American must understand this extraordinarily powerful institution and how it affects his or her everyday life, and fight back.”
Download or read book A Term at the Fed written by Laurence H. Meyer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a governor of the Federal Reserve Board from 1996 to 2002, Laurence H. Meyer helped make the economic policies that steered the United States through some of the wildest and most tumultuous times in its recent history. Now, in A Term at the Fed, Governor Meyer provides an insider's view of the Fed, the decisions that affected both the U.S. and world economies, and the challenges inherent in using monetary policy to guide the economy. When Governor Meyer was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1996, the United States was entering one of the most prosperous periods in its history. It was the time of "irrational exuberance" and the fabled New Economy. Soon, however, the economy was tested by the Asian financial crisis, the Russian default and devaluation, the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, the bursting of America's stock bubble, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In what amounts to a definitive playbook of monetary policy, Meyer now relives the Fed's closed-door debates -- debates that questioned how monetary policy should adapt to the possibility of a New Economy, how the Fed should respond to soaring equity prices, and whether the Fed should broker the controversial private sector bailout of LTCM, among other issues. Meyer deftly weaves these issues with firsthand stories about the personalities involved, from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to the various staffers, governors, politicians, and reporters that populate the world of the Fed. Since the end of his term, Meyer has continued to watch the Fed and the world economy. He believes that we are witnessing a repetition of some of the events of the remarkable 1990s -- including a further acceleration in productivity and perhaps another bull market. History does not repeat itself, yet Meyer shows us how the lessons learned yesterday may help the Fed shape policy today.
Download or read book The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis written by Ben Bernanke and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-24 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects a series of lectures the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve gave in 2012 about the Federal Reserve and the 2008 financial crisis.
Download or read book The Myth of Independence written by Sarah Binder and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at how politics and economics shape the relationship between Congress and the Federal Reserve Born out of crisis a century ago, the Federal Reserve has become the most powerful macroeconomic policymaker and financial regulator in the world. The Myth of Independence marshals archival sources, interviews, and statistical analyses to trace the Fed’s transformation from a weak, secretive, and decentralized institution in 1913 to a remarkably transparent central bank a century later. Offering a unique account of Congress’s role in steering this evolution, Sarah Binder and Mark Spindel explore the Fed’s past, present, and future and challenge the myth of its independence.
Download or read book Secrets of the Temple written by William Greider and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1989-01-15 with total page 804 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker engineered changes in America's economy.
Download or read book The Fed written by Martin Mayer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Greenspan make the key decision of the Clinton boom years - to let the good times roll while unemployment sank to record lows - despite all historical evidence that it would be inflationary?"--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Lords of Easy Money written by Christopher Leonard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk. If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us. But the Fed also has a unique power to reshape the American economy for the worse, which it did, fatefully, on November 4, 2010 through a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway...and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in two short months. Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, stock prices are trading far above what’s justified by actual corporate profits, corporate debt in America is at an all-time high, and this debt is being traded by big banks on Wall Street, leaving them vulnerable—just as they were during the mortgage boom. Middle-class wages have barely budged in a decade, and consumers are buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. The Lords of Easy Money tells the shocking, riveting tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. This will be the first inside story of how we really got here—and why we face a frightening future.
Download or read book The Federal Reserve System written by Donald R. Wells and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Reserve banking system was created in 1913 in an effort to bring coherence to nationwide banking practices and prevent crises like the financial panic of 1907. Since it began operating in 1914, the Federal Reserve has played a crucial role in determining American financial policy and practice. It is largely an entity unto itself, operating independently, rarely subject to the political machinations of Congress or the presidency. Yet few Americans know how it works, and even fewer know anything of its history. This history of the Federal Reserve begins by giving an overview of American banking practices before the Federal Reserve's formation. The events leading to the Reserve's creation, and its early trials and tribulations, are then documented. Subsequent chapters track the Federal Reserve's history: its role during times of financial and military crisis, its relationship to each presidential administration, and the Fed's evolution as its leadership has changed over the years. The history wraps up with the Alan Greenspan era, explaining major changes in the institution's operating procedures since the 1980s. An appendix lists all members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, from its formation until 2003.
Download or read book 21st Century Monetary Policy The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID 19 written by Ben S. Bernanke and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 21st Century Monetary Policy takes readers inside the Federal Reserve, explaining what it does and why. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve deployed an extraordinary range of policy tools that helped prevent the collapse of the financial system and the U.S. economy. Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues lent directly to U.S. businesses, purchased trillions of dollars of government securities, pumped dollars into the international financial system, and crafted a new framework for monetary policy that emphasized job creation. These strategies would have astonished Powell’s late-20th-century predecessors, from William McChesney Martin to Alan Greenspan, and the advent of these tools raises new questions about the future landscape of economic policy. In 21st Century Monetary Policy, Ben S. Bernanke—former chair of the Federal Reserve and one of the world’s leading economists—explains the Fed’s evolution and speculates on its future. Taking a fresh look at the bank’s policymaking over the past seventy years, including his own time as chair, Bernanke shows how changes in the economy have driven the Fed’s innovations. He also lays out new challenges confronting the Fed, including the return of inflation, cryptocurrencies, increased risks of financial instability, and threats to its independence. Beyond explaining the central bank’s new policymaking tools, Bernanke also captures the drama of moments when so much hung on the Fed’s decisions, as well as the personalities and philosophies of those who led the institution.
Download or read book Case Against the Fed The written by Murray Newton Rothbard and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1994 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ben Bernanke s Fed written by Ethan S. Harris and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2008-08-12 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Bernanke's swearing in as Federal Reserve chairman in 2006 marked the end of Alan Greenspan's long, legendary career. To date, the new chair has garnered mixed reviews. Business economists see him as the best-qualified successor to Greenspan, while many traders and investors worry that he's too academic for the job. Meanwhile, many ordinary Americans do not even know who he is. How will Bernanke's leadership affect the Fed's actions in the coming years? How will Bernanke build on Greenspan's success, but also put his own stamp on the Fed? What will all this imply for businesses and investors? In Ben Bernanke's Fed, Ethan Harris provides exceptional insights into these crucial issues. As a leading "Fed watch" economist, Harris draws on Bernanke's academic research, his speeches as a governor of the Fed, and his first two years on the job to shed light on: · How the Federal Reserve analyzes and manages the economy using a synthesis of classical and Keynesian theory · Bernanke's strategies for fighting inflation · The implications of the new chair's remarkably plain-spoken style · How Bernanke has cultivated diverse viewpoints but still builds consensus within the Fed Engaging and discerning, this book demystifies the man who has stepped into what many describe as the second most powerful job in America.
