The Choice of a Monetary Policy Framework: Lessons from the 1920S
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About the Richmond
regulates banks that have a national charter, and can Who appoints the Board of Governors? usually be recognized by the word “National” in or the The seven members, called governors, are appointed by letters “N.A.” after their names. On July 21, 2011, the U.S. president and are confirmed by the U.S. Senate for supervisory responsibility for federal savings and loans staggered 14-year terms. and federal savings banks switched to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Who leads the Board of Governors? • The National Credit Union Administration regulates • The Board of Governors is led by a chair and a vice chair, federally chartered credit unions. who serve four-year terms. About the • States also have supervisory responsibility for • The chair and vice chair are nominated by the president state-chartered banks and credit unions, as well as and confirmed by the Senate. Richmond Fed other non-depository institutions, such as consumer • The current chair is Jerome Powell and the vice chair is finance companies, mortgage lenders and brokers, Stanley Fischer. payday lenders, and check cashers. What is the Fed doing to promote accountability Do people have accounts at the Federal Reserve? and transparency? No, they do not. We’re a “banker’s bank.” Only depository • The Fed is ultimately accountable to the American institutions and certain other financial entities are eligible people, and regularly provides information to the to have accounts at a Federal Reserve Bank. public so people better understand what we do. • The Federal Reserve Board chair reports to Congress twice a year on the health of the economy and the actions of the FOMC. -
Actions of the Board, Its Staff, and the Federal Reserve Banks; Applications and Reports Received
Federal Reserve Release H.2 Actions of the Board, Its Staff, and the Federal Reserve Banks; Applications and Reports Received No. 22 Week Ending June 1, 2019 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC 20551 H.2 Board Actions May 26, 2019 to June 1, 2019 Forms Forms -- initial Board review to extend with revision the Federal Reserve Membership Applications (FR 2083A and FR 2083B) and Federal Reserve Bank Stock Applications (FR 2030, FR 2030a, FR 2056, FR 2086, FR 2086a, and FR 2087) and to extend without revision two Federal Reserve Membership Applications (FR 2083 and FR 2083C). - Proposed, May 30, 2019 Personnel Division of Supervision and Regulation -- appointment of Mona Elliot as deputy associate director and Christine Graham as assistant director. - Announced, May 31, 2019 Management Division -- appointment of Winona H. Varnon as director and Michell Clark as senior adviser. - Approved, May 30, 2019 Regulations and Policies Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) -- interagency final rule to modify the LCR rule to treat certain municipal obligations as high-quality liquid assets, in accordance with the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. - Approved, May 23, 2019 (A/C) (A/C) = Addition or Correction Board - Page 1 of 1 H.2 Actions under delegated authority May 26, 2019 to June 1, 2019 S&R Supervision and Regulation RBOPS Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems C&CA Consumer and Community Affairs IF International Finance FOMC Federal Open Market Committee MA Monetary Affairs Bank Branches, Domestic San Francisco First Utah Bank, Salt Lake City, Utah -- to establish a branch at Village of Traverse Mountain, 3600 North Digital Drive, Lehi. -
The Budgetary Status of the Federal Reserve System
A CBO Study The Budgetary Status of the February 1985 Federal Reserve System Congress ol the Un~tedStates - 4 Congress~onalBudget Ott~ce THE BUDGETARY STATUS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM The Congress of the United States Congressional Budget Off ice -~ ~-~ NOTE The report includes budget data through calendar year 1983, the most recent data available when the report was prepared. PREFACE This report on the budgetary status of the Federal Reserve System was undertaken at the request of the Joint Economic Committee. The study describes the structure, activities, and financing of the Federal Reserve System, and reviews the history of the budgetary independence of the Sys- tem. It considers in detail two proposed alterations in the Federal Reserve's budgetary status: a complete presentation of Federal Reserve System finan- ces in the budget, and a requirement of prior appropriations for Federal Reserve System expenditures. The study does not examine in detail the Federal Reserve's determination and conduct of monetary policy. The study was prepared by Roy T. Meyers of the Budget Process Unit under the supervision of Richard P. Emery, Jr. David Delquadro, Mitchell Mutnick, and Marvin Phaup contributed material and valuable advice. Use- ful comments and suggestions were made by Valerie Amerkhail, Jacob Dreyer, Louis Fisher, Robert Hartman, Mary Maginniss, Marty Regalia, Stephen Swaim, Jean Wells, and John Woolley. Francis S. Pierce edited the manuscript. Paula Gatens prepared the manuscript for publication. Rudolph G. Penner Director February 1985 CONTENTS PREFACE ............................................. iii SUMMARY ............................................ xi CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ........................... CHAPTER I1. A HISTORY OF THE BUDGETARY INDEPENDENCE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM .......... -
Information and Anti-American Attitudes
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports Information and Anti-American Attitudes Adeline Delavande Basit Zafar Staff Report No. 558 April 2012 Revised September 2015 This paper presents preliminary findings and is being distributed to economists and other interested readers solely to stimulate discussion and elicit comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and are not necessarily reflective of views at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors. Information and Anti-American Attitudes Adeline Delavande and Basit Zafar Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 558 April 2012; revised September 2015 JEL classification: D83, L80 Abstract This paper investigates how attitudes toward the United States are affected by the provision of information. We generate a panel of attitudes in urban Pakistan, in which respondents are randomly exposed to fact-based statements describing the United States in either a positive or negative light. Anti-American sentiment is high and heterogenous in our sample at the baseline, and systematically correlated with intended behavior, such as intended migration. We find that revised attitudes are, on average, significantly different from baseline attitudes: attitudes are revised upward (downward) upon receipt of positive (negative) information, indicating that providing information had a meaningful effect on U.S. favorability. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity in the revision of attitudes, with a substantial proportion of individuals not responding to the information. Nonrevisions are primarily a result of nonmalleability of attitudes. Revisions are driven by both saliency bias and information-based updating. -
The Federal Reserve System Purposes & Functions
PurposeOverview of the Federal Reserve System The Federal Reserve performs five key functions in the public interest to promote the health of the U.S. economy and the stability of the U.S. financial system. The U.S. Approach to Central Banking ................................. 2 The Decentralized System Structure and Its Philosophy ................ 4 The Reserve Banks: A Blend of Private and 1 Governmental Characteristics . 6 vi Overview of the Federal Reserve System T he Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. It performs five general functions to promote the effective operation of the U.S. economy and, more generally, the public interest. The Federal Reserve • conducts the nation’s monetary policy to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates in the U.S. economy; • promotes the stability of the financial system and seeks to minimize and contain systemic risks through active monitoring and engagement in the U.S. and abroad; • promotes the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions and monitors their impact on the financial system as a whole; Figure 1.1. The Federal Reserve System The Federal Reserve is unique among central banks. By statute, Congress provided for a central banking system with public and private characteristics. The System performs five functions in the public interest. 1 U.S. The Federal Central Bank Reserve System 3 Federal 12 Federal Federal Key Reserve Board Reserve Open Market Entities of Governors Banks Committee Helping Fostering Promoting Conducting Supervising 5 maintain the payment and consumer the nation’s and regulating Key stability of settlement protection and monetary nancial the nancial system safety community Functions policy institutions system and efciency development The Federal Reserve System Purposes & Functions 1 • fosters payment and settlement system safety and efficiency through services to the banking industry and the U.S. -
The Federal Reserve's Role
CHAPTER 6 The Federal Reserve’s Role Actions Before, During, and After the 2008 Panic in the Historical Context of the Great Contraction Michael D. Bordo1 Introduction The financial crisis of 2007–2008 has been viewed as the worst since the Great Contraction of the 1930s. It is also widely believed that the policy lessons learned from the experience of the 1930s helped the US monetary authorities prevent another Great Depression. Indeed, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve during the crisis, stated in his 2012 book that, having been a scholar of the Great Depression, his understand- ing of the events of the early 1930s led him to take many of the actions that he did. This chapter briefly reviews the salient features of the Great Con- traction of 1929–1933 and the policy lessons learned. I then focus on the recent experience and examine the key policy actions taken by the Fed to allay the crisis and to attenuate the recession. I then evaluate Fed policy actions in light of the history of the 1930s. My main finding is that the historical experience does not quite conform to the recent crisis and, in some respects, basing policy on the lessons of the earlier crisis may have exacerbated the recent economic stress and have caused serious problems that could contribute to the next crisis. The Great Contraction story The leading explanation of the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 is by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in A Monetary History of the United States: 1867 to 1960 (1963a). -
A Missing Stop on the Road from Warburton to Friedman-Meiselman
A Missing Stop on the Road from Warburton to Friedman – Meiselman and St. Louis By Michael T. Belongia Department of Economics University of Mississippi Box 1848 University, MS 38677 [email protected] and Peter N. Ireland Department of Economics Boston College 140 Commonwealth Avenue Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 [email protected] June 2021 ABSTRACT: Friedman and Meiselman (1963) typically is recognized as the original study that used a reduced-form equation to evaluate whether fiscal or monetary actions were the dominant influence on aggregate spending. It also provided the foundation for the better- known St. Louis Equation that followed. Missing from this evolution, however, are important precedents by Brunner and Balbach (1959) and Balbach (1963) that also employed a reduced form framework to offer evidence on the same fiscal versus monetary debate. Moreover, they also investigated whether the demand for money function was stable and inversely related to an interest rate, properties necessary in their reasoning before any more general model of national income determination could be developed. With this foundation, they then derived a reduced form expression for personal income from an explicit theoretical model and, in its estimation, they anticipated and addressed some of the empirical criticisms later directed at Friedman-Meiselman and the early versions of the St. Louis Equation. Taken together, the theoretical and empirical work reported in Balbach (1963) and Brunner and Balbach (1959) suggest these papers are clear antecedents of later reduced form expressions and should be recognized as such. Keywords: St. Louis Equation, monetary policy, fiscal policy, reduced form equation JEL Codes: B2, B4, E3 A Missing Stop on the Road from Warburton to Friedman – Meiselman and St. -
Monetary Policy Frameworks and Indicators for the Federal Reserve in the 1920S*
Working Paper Series This paper can be downloaded without charge from: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/ Monetary Policy Frameworks and Indicators for the Federal Reserve in the 1920s* Thomas M. Humphrey ‡ Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working Paper No. 00-7 August 2000 JEL Nos. E5, B1 Keywords: quantity theory, real bills doctrine, scissors effect, policy indicators. Abstract The 1920s and 1930s saw the Fed reject a state-of-the-art empirical policy framework for a logically defective one. Consisting of a quantity theoretic analysis of the business cycle, the former framework featured the money stock, price level, and real interest rates as policy indicators. By contrast, the Fed’s procyclical needs-of-trade, or real bills, framework stressed such policy guides as market nominal interest rates, volume of member bank borrowing, and type and amount of commercial paper eligible for rediscount at the central bank. The start of the Great Depression put these rival sets of indicators to the test. The quantity theoretic set correctly signaled that money and credit were on sharply contractionary paths that would worsen the slump. By contrast, the real bills indicators incorrectly signaled that money and credit conditions were sufficiently easy and needed no correction. This experience shows that policy measures and measurement, no matter how accurate and precise, can lead policymakers astray when embodied in a theoretically flawed framework. *This paper does not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The author is indebted to William Gavin, Bob Hetzel, Judy Klein, Mary Morgan, and Anna Schwartz for helpful comments. -
FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM the First 100 Years
FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM The First 100 Years A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF CENTRAL BANKING FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM The First 100 Years A Chapter in the History of Central Banking n 1913, Albert Einstein was working on his established the second Bank of the United States. It new theory of gravity, Richard Nixon was was also given a 20-year charter and operated from born, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn 1816 to 1836; however, its charter was not renewed in as assistant secretary of the Navy. It was either. After the charter expired, the United States also the year Woodrow Wilson took the oath endured a series of financial crises during the 19th of office as the 28th President of the United and early 20th centuries. Several factors contributed IStates, intent on advocating progressive reform to the crises, including a number of bank failures, and change. One of his biggest reforms occurred which generated waves of bank panics and on December 23, 1913, when he signed the Federal economic instability.2 Reserve Act into law. This landmark legislation When Jay Cooke and Company, the nation’s created the Federal Reserve System, the nation’s largest bank, failed in 1873, a panic erupted, leading central bank.1 to runs on other financial institutions. Within months, the nation’s economic problems deepened as silver A Need for Stability prices dropped after the Coinage Act of 1873 was Why was a central bank needed? The nation passed, which dampened the interests of U.S. silver had tried twice before to establish a central bank miners and led to a recession that lasted until 1879. -
Monetary Policy in the Great Depression: What the Fed Did, and Why
David C. Wheelock David C. Wheelock, assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas-Austin, is a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. David H. Kelly provided research assistance. Monetary Policy in the Great Depression: What the Fed Did, and Why SIXTY YEARS AGO the United States— role of monetary policy in causing the Depression indeed; most of the world—was in the midst of and the possibility that different policies might the Great Depression. Today, interest in the have made it less severe. Depression's causes and the failure of govern- ment policies to prevent it continues, peaking Much of the debate centers on whether mone- whenever the stock market crashes or the econ- tary conditions were "easy" or "tight" during the omy enters a recession. In the 1930s, dissatisfac- Depression—that is, whether money and credit tion with the failure of monetary policy to pre- were plentiful and inexpensive, or scarce and vent the Depression, or to revive the economy, expensive. During the 1930s, many Fed officials led to sweeping changes in the structure of the argued that money was abundant and "cheap," Federal Reserve System. One of the most impor- even "sloppy," because market interest rates tant changes was the creation of the Federal were low and few banks borrowed from the dis- Open Market Committee (FOMC) to direct open count window. Modern researchers who agree market policy. Recently Congress has again con- generally believe neither that monetary forces sidered possible changes in the Federal Reserve were responsible for the Depression nor that System.1 different policies could have alleviated it. -
The Great Depression: an Overview by David C
Introduction The Great Depression: An Overview by David C. Wheelock Why should students learn about the Great Depression? Our grandparents and great-grandparents lived through these tough times, but you may think that you should focus on more recent episodes in Ameri- can life. In this essay, I hope to convince you that the Great Depression is worthy of your interest and deserves attention in economics, social studies and history courses. One reason to study the Great Depression is that it was by far the worst economic catastrophe of the 20th century and, perhaps, the worst in our nation’s history. Between 1929 and 1933, the quantity of goods and services produced in the United States fell by one-third, the unemployment rate soared to 25 percent of the labor force, the stock market lost 80 percent of its value and some 7,000 banks failed. At the store, the price of chicken fell from 38 cents a pound to 12 cents, the price of eggs dropped from 50 cents a dozen to just over 13 cents, and the price of gasoline fell from 10 cents a gallon to less than a nickel. Still, many families went hungry, and few could afford to own a car. Another reason to study the Great Depression is that the sheer magnitude of the economic collapse— and the fact that it involved every aspect of our economy and every region of our country—makes this event a great vehicle for teaching important economic concepts. You can learn about inflation and defla- tion, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and unemployment by comparing the Depression with more recent experiences. -
Austrian Economics Newsletter
as the final means of payment by all participants in the every depositor at a given bank or thrift against loss, but market means that fiat money can be literally lent and which, in practice, has almost always guaranteed the full spent into existence regardless of the public's existing de- worth of all deposits, usually by subsidizing the merger of, mand for it. For example, if an additional quantity of Fed an ailing institution with a healthy one.6 Second and moc' 1 notes is printed up and spent by government on various importantly, there is the Fed itself, which, in its much goods and services, an excess supply of money will tempo- publicized function as the "lender of last resort," always rarily be created in the economy. The initial recipients of stands ready to head off a banking panic by simply printing the new money will quickly get rid of the excess cash up and lending the needed quantities of Fed notes to banks simply by increasing their own spending on goods; those or thrifts unable to meet their demand liabilitie~.~For these who eagerly receive the new money as payments in the reasons, checkable deposits held at federally-insured banks second or later rounds of spending will do likewise, in the and thrifts are readily acceptable in exchange as perfect process bidding up the prices of goods, reducing the pur- substitutes, dollar for dollar, for Federal Reserve notes.8 chasing power of the dollar, and, consequently, increasing the quantities of dollars that each individual desires to In contrast, travelers' checks issued by nonbank financial keep on hand to meet expected future payments or for institutions, such as American Express, are excluded from other purposes.