Notes On Monetary And Monetary Policy

The Federal Reserve has the dual job of ensuring price stability and maximum employment, which are contradictory objectives. The Feds try to achieve the goals through monetary policy which determines the demand and supply of money by controlling interest rates. The Fed’s goal is to achieve a natural rate of unemployment of more or less 5%. When the actual unemployment figures are below the natural rate of unemployment, inflation increases and there is a high demand of goods and services propelling the economy with the ensuing labor demands and the pressure it places on wages, which in turn produces inflation. When the Fed is faced with this scenario, it must increase the rates to slow the growth and achieve price stability (contractionary cycle).

Given its mandate to maximize employment and maintain price stability, the Fed took monetary policy actions in December 2008 to keep long-term interest rates at near zero (between 0.0% and 0.25%) to help stabilize and revive the U.S economy -- leaving no option for further interest rate reduction.

The discussion of whether the Federal Reserve should raise the federal funds rate is a highly contentious one. Members of the Federal Reserve (“Fed”) and academic economists disagree about what constitutes appropriate future macroeconomic policy for the Unites States. In the past, the Fed had been able to raise rates when the unemployment rate was under 5% and inflation was at a target of 2%. Enigmatically, since the Great Recession and despite a strengthening economy, year-over-year total inflation since 2008 has averaged only 1.4%—as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (“PCE”). Today, PCE inflation is at 1-1.5% and has continuously undershot the Fed’s inflation target of 2% three years in a row. (Evan 2015) In the six years since the bottom of the Great Recession the U.S. economy has made great strides in lowering the published unemployment rate from about 10% back down to about 5.5%. In light of this data, certain individuals believe that the Federal Reserve should move to increase the federal funds rate in 2015 because unemployment is near 5% and inflation should bounce back on its own (Derby 2015). However, this recommendation is misguided.

The Federal reserve needs to increase interest rates in the next year in order to reduce inflation. With low unemployment, the government is placing strain on the economy by lowering taxes and increasing spending. When the economy reaches its maximum output, prices increase while output remains the same. This could be what is happening now, with economic overheating on the horizon. However, the Federal Reserve could stifle this inflation by hiking interest rates over the next year. This would decrease the money supply and thus reduce inflation to its targeted level. It would also provide some leverage for the Fed to lower rates in the case of a recession.

This report discusses the association between the Federal Reserve System and U.S. Monetary Policy. It mentions that the government can finance war through money printing, debt, and raising taxes. It affirms that The Federal Reserve is not a government entity but an independent one. It supports that the Federal Reserve’s policies are the root cause of boom and bust cycles. It confirms that the FED’s money printing causes inflation and loss of wealth for United States citizens. It affirms that the government’s involvement in education through student loans has raised the cost of a college education. It confirms that the United States economy is in a housing bubble, the stock market bubble, bond market bubble, student loan bubble, dollar bubble, and consumer loan bubble. It supports the idea that the Federal Reserve does not raise interest rates because of the fear of deflating the bubbles they have created in recent years.

To begin, The Federal Reserve System opted to raise interest rates that were placed near zero years ago in order to aid the economy’s growth and prevent inflation from exceeding the target number. Several factors including: the five percent drop in the unemployment rate, and the increase in wages, and the outlook on future inflation contributed to the Federal Reserve’s decision take this action. However, the increase in interest rates in December has generated mixed results, and it appeared the Federal Reserve would announce the interest rates were going to increase again. Instead, Janet Yellen, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, announced that there were better days ahead for the economy, and a slow and careful approach to future increases in the interest rate would serve the economy best, ensuring the growth is maintained. Although the interest rates remained the same early in 2016, they are expected to increase during the June meeting of the Federal Reserve. but cited the economy needed low interest rates in order for the economy to maintain growth. I find it interesting that Yellen continues to worry about inflation growing in the coming years, although the interest rate increase should keep inflation in check through its effect of the economic markets. Yellen sites that she would like the inflation to become and stay at 2 percent each year. However, the current inflation rate is .9 percent, so the the economy is a long way from achieving its target inflation rate

To begin, the article explains the Federal Reserve’s plan to take a careful approach to enacting contractionary monetary policies, policies used to decrease money supply, in the future. Last December the Federal Reserve raised the interest rates after they had been near zero for years to ensure inflation was kept in check and to promote economic growth. It appeared the economy would be in for another increase in the interest rates sometime this year, but the Feds have rethought that strategy. If the Federal Reserve were to continue to raise interest rates it would have short-run and long-run effects on the Money Market, Goods and Services Market, Planned Investment, Phillip Curve, and Aggregated Supply and Demand. These effects are aspects that have to be considered because they express and explain the effects the increase in interest rates has on the economy and explain if the Federal Reserve is enacting the correct policy to achieve their goal.

If Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve President is planning on raising the interest rates the US Federal Reserve will have to deal with the negative effects on economic growth, unemployment, wages, the prices of goods and services, and government spending. The effect on economical growth will be how much individuals would borrow to increase their spending. Over time the money individuals took and have to payback would increase. Thus, leading to debt by how much money they owe back. By increasing the amount individuals have to borrow it will lead to more unemployment. The need of consumption will decrease and that put more and more people out of jobs. Scarcity is always going to exist but a low demand will cause supply to be low and price be

The FED decided to carry out its bond purchasing program in August to help prevent deflation (Hauser, 2011). The article could have turned out much differently if the FED did not step up and take action. In addition the FED has the authority to adjust interest rates in accordance with the current economic condition. Currently the FED is willing to curb inflation by adjusting the interest rates at a moment’s notice (Hauser, 2011). The FED’s invisible hand can sometimes help prevent major economic disasters.

The Federal Reserve went into action in response to the 2008 recession by rapidly reducing interest rates with the hopes of encouraging economic growth. The federal funds target rate was decreased to between zero and .25 percent. The results of the rate changes caused what is called “zero bound”, this reduced the effectiveness of monetary policy with the near non-existence of interest rates.

However, because of the plentiful unused productive resources and low interest rate during the financial crisis, increasing government spending both decreased the unemployment rate and increased output. As shown in Figure 4, since the U.S. economy was characterized by a significant shortage in demand and excess in capacity, like point A and B inside the production possibility frontier, increasing government spending shifted these points out toward point C rather than just moving these points along the same curve. Thus, moving outward resulted in increases in both the amount of output and the employment rate. In addition, since the financial market fell into a liquidity trap during the financial crisis, increasing government spending did not result in an extremely high interest rate, which might cause inflation and threaten the total amount of investment inflation. On the other hand, even if the interest rate is higher than expected, the Federal Reserve could use expansionary monetary policy to decrease the interest rate through open market

First, the term recession is identified by N. Gregory Mankiw as “a period of declining real incomes and rising unemployment.” The actions of the Federal Reserve play a major role in struggling against the negative effects of a recession. In doing that, the Fed may use various methods, the most important of which are monetary policies. Monetary

The article that I chose to analyze talks about why the Federal Reserve might raise interest rates this year yet. The article talks about how the Federal Reserve wants the economy to be relatively healthy before they take a chance with changing the interest rates. Overall, the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates to help keep our economy stable. It is now time to slow down our economic growth since we have been in a recovery ever since 2009.

According to the simulation, there are three key economic tools used by the Federal Reserve to control the monetary policy.

The unemployment rate in the United States has improved dramatically over the last two years, from a high of 8.3% in July 2012, to a low of 6.6% in January 2014. In October of 2012, the civilian labor force increased from 578,000 to 155.6 million, labor force participation increased up to 63.8%, and total employment overall rose by 410,000! Since then, the unemployment rate has been falling at a stable rate due to a political push from Washington DC and new employment initiatives. The inflation rate over the last 2 years has been relatively stably, with a few major increases and decreases in 2012 and 2013. It reached a high of 2.3% in June of 2012, and reached a low of 1.0% at the end of 2013. The federal interest rate has remained at a constant .25% over the past few years.