John Ryan () (Hult International Business School) Adam Koronowski () (Warsaw University)
Abstract
The Federal Reserve System or the Fed is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. Founded by the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the Fed has the responsibility of setting the monetary policy of the U.S. The Fed’s actions affect the money supply in the U.S. market which has a direct influence on interest rates, growth and inflation. To better understand the role of the Fed we will first describe its structure and organization. We will then see who is really behind the central bank’s actions and who holds the reins of power inside the institution that plays the most important role in financial markets throughout the world. The monetary policy implemented by the Fed is closely monitored by major financial markets and institutions as it affects directly investments and security prices. We will explain clearly how the Fed conducts its monetary policy using three major tools to either decrease or increase money supply: open market operations, adjusting the discount rate and adjusting the reserve requirement ratio. We examine the main objectives of the Fed’s monetary policies and how those objectives maintain a “conflict of interest” relationship. A special interest we devote to a possible negative role that monetary policy may play in fuelling excessive asset price booms and we ask whether monetary policy should contradict the growth of asset price bubbles. Finally we examine the policies of the former chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan (1987-2006) which contributed to the current crisis. We also assess the reaction to the crisis of the monetary policy of Ben Bernanke.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Venice "Ca' Foscari", Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
2009_19.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: