Running Head: Great Recession 1. Great Recession5. . .

Max: Now that we have taken care of fiscal policy we must acknowledge the second half of the efforts to pull ourselves out of the recession. Monetary policy! Monetary policy is the action of the federal Bank of the United States of America to manipulate the economy using the three tools. The three tools are open market operations, discount rate, and reserve requirements. The most commonly used tool is OMO’s, the fed buys bonds from the federal government and then sell to the public. With the profit they make from the bonds sold to the public they buy more bonds. And then it continues in this cycle.

By law, the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy to achieve its macroeconomic objectives of stable prices and maximum employment. The Federal Open Market Committee usually conducts policy by adjusting the level of short-term interest rates in response to changes in the outlook of the economy. Since 2008, the FOMC has also used large-scale purchases of Treasury securities and securities that were guaranteed or issued by federal agencies as a policy tool in an effort to lower longer-term interest rates and thereby improve financial conditions and so support the economic recovery (What).

As the onslaught of the sub-prime mortgage crisis began in late 2007, the housing market plummeted sending the economy into what is now known as the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve, as well as the private and government sectors, quickly took notice. In November of 2008 the Federal Reserve undertook its first trimester of quantitative easing; which means the Fed began purchasing treasury securities to increase the money supply in the system, with the hopes that the increase in assets would encourage lending and investment, leading to a resurgence of the economy in terms of unemployment rates and GDP. As time progressed the Fed continued to implement quantitative easing into its third trimester due to a lack of sufficient results.

Today the United States Americans more than ever; there is a constant fear of an awaiting recession due to the economy. The recession in the later 2000’s has been known as the greatest economic decline since the Great Depression. The United States of America, the banks and businesses are not able to succeed and are failing due to the market. Many people across America cannot afford their homes or bills due to the unemployment rate that seems to keep increasing. Many people blame this on the higher oil or gas prices, and the wars that the United States acts on. The recession has overall declined our economic activity in business profits, employment, and investment. This is all due to our falling market, and the rise of prices that so many Americans cannot afford.

According to the financial definition, a recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting longer than a few months. It is visible in industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade. The technical indicator of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by a country's GDP. (Dictionary.com) A less official and more realistic definition of an economic recession is the social perception of the state of the economy at a given time. The collective beliefs of the public, mainly businesses and consumers, drive the social perception of whether things are seen as positive or negative. Unfortunately

Everybody in the United Stated was affected by the recession that began in December of 2007 and spanned all the way to June 2009. Even though the recession is over, many people are still being affected by it and have still not been able to recover from the great recession. “The recent recession features the largest decline in output, consumption, and investment, and the largest increase in unemployment, of any post-war recession”. Many people lost their jobs due to the recession and some of them are still having a hard time finding jobs and getting back on their feet. Businesses

A recession is full-proof sign of declined activity within the economic environment. Many economists generally define the attributes of a recession are two consecutive quarters with declining GDP. Many factors contribute to an economy's fall into a recession, but the major cause argued is inflation. As individuals or even businesses try to cut costs and spending this causes GDP to decline, unemployment rate can rise due to less spending which can be one of the combined factors when an economy falls into a recession. Inflation is the general rise in prices of goods and services over a period of time. Inflation can happen for reasons such as higher energy and production costs and that includes governmental debt.

The economic meaning of a recession is that the gross Domestic Product (GDP) has declined for two or more consecutive quarters. Unemployment rises, housing falls, stocks fall and the economy is in trouble. Whenever the government sees that the economy is entering a recession it is important for it to act. The U.S acted in two ways during the Great recession of 2008 through fiscal and monetary policies. Renaud Fillieule identifies that “ Monetary and credit expansions have been the main tools used by the U.S. government and central bank to try and recover economically from the Great Recession of 2008” (Fillieule r, Pg. 99 2016). These Keynesian policies are debatable among economist, none the less they were implemented and put the U.S on the road to recovery.

How can monetary policy and fiscal policy greatly influence the US economy? Keynesian economics says, “A depressed economy is the result of inadequate spending .” According to Keynesian the government intervention can help a depressed economy through monetary policy and fiscal .The idea established by Keynes was that managing the economy is a government responsibility .

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.

The most recent recession was the great recession. The Great Recession was a period of general economic decline observed in world markets during the late 2000s. It slowly spread throughout the whole world. It was cause by International trade imbalances and tax lending standards contributing to high levels of developed country household debt and real-estate bubbles that have since burst; U.S. government housing policies; and limited regulation of non-depository financial institutions. Once the recession began, various responses were attempted with different degrees of success. These included fiscal policies of governments; monetary policies of central banks; measures designed to help indebted consumers refinance their mortgage debt; and inconsistent

The recent recession lasting from 2007 until 2009, and the effects of which are still highly visible in the U.S. economy, led the Federal Reserve to use new and largely untested methods for protecting the country from a total financial collapse. The new strategy, which blurs the lines between monetary and fiscal policy, had been attempted only once before, and is open to criticism from several difference angles. This report documents the history, purpose, and controversy surrounding quantitative easing as a strategy to mitigate the effects of the recent recession. After considering these factors, the conclusion is drawn that quantitative easing was a modestly successful policy, yet one which should not be employed again. Although

Therefore, the quantitative easing adopted from 2009 was trying to gradually resume sustainable economic growth. Quantitative easing has helped to avert what could have been a second great depression (Wall Street, 2011). The US economy has been clawing its way out of the recession in 2009 and recovery has been slow compared to previous economic cycles. Regular review of the pace of securities purchase by the Federal reserve and the overall size of asset-purchase program in light of incoming information and adjusting the program as need be will help foster maximum employment and price stability.

As the global economy stagnated, weak countries were targeted by bond vigilantes, making it difficult to finance and forcing up their financing costs. Nations were focused to implement austerity programs, cutting spending and increasing taxes to stabilise public finances and reduce debt, trapping them in recessions or low growth, which only aggravated the problem. With the basic strategy ineffective, the focus shifted to keeping interest rates near zero and creating inflation to increase nominal GDP. If the budget could be kept in check, then debt levels would not rise and perhaps begin to fall. ... The policies, especially QE, helped stabilise conditions by lowering borrowing costs and allowing high debt levels to be managed, but did not restore growth or create sufficient inflation. The predictable failures were reminiscent of

EFORE the financial crisis life was simple for central bankers. They had a clear mission: temper booms and busts to maintain low and stable inflation. And they had a seemingly effective means to achieve that: nudge a key short-term interest rate up to discourage borrowing (and thus check inflation), or down to foster looser credit (and thus spur growth and employment). Deft use of this technique had kept the world humming along so smoothly in the decades before the crash that economists had declared a “Great Moderation” in the economic cycle. As it turned out, however, the moderation was transitory—and the crash that ended it undermined not only the central bankers’ record but also the method they relied on to prop up growth. Monetary