The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)

The Federal Reserve is the single entity in control of the monetary policy of the United State of America. Monetary policy is the process that the Federal Reserve takes in order to control the supply of money and to attempt the control the direction of interest rates. The reason for doing these actions is in attempt to control the country’s inflation and employment rates, which are the biggest indicators and factors of a healthy economy.

To be more precise in the way the monetary policy works, it is under three implements that define its functions: open market operations, changes in the discount rate, and changes in the required reserve ratio. These are the functions that provide the Federal Reserves (the Fed) the ability to change the money supply in our economy. It is a matter of actions taken to maintain our country in the best way possible and, of course, stability comes with a price. With things like supporting our troops in other countries, like Iraq and Afghanistan, a cut in tax rates, and increases in overall spending, it adds up to where we have spent more than we have collected in revenue (Fix the

The lackluster effort of the Fed to control the money supply shows their true hand. In the mid to late 70s, the increasing inflation had gone out of control, and Volcker made it his mission to stop that inflation. To the members of the Federal Reserve Board, this policy was clearly to reduce inflation, but market outsiders were confused by the Fed’s switch in policy, and scared by the volatility of the money supply. In 1981, the uncertainty of Federal Reserve policy could be seen in the bond markets, which rely heavily on stable interest rates. According to Greider, the bond market had a “traumatic seizure” that could best be described as an “anxiety attack” in April of 1981, as a result of the monetary policy pursued by the Fed, which fundamentally abandoned the control of interest rates (Greider 374). With the new policy, the Fed caused interest rates to fluctuate with the money supply, which relies heavily on the velocity of money, or the amount of times money changes hands over an interval of time. Monetarists believed that the velocity of money was constant, and criticized the Fed for not simply increasing the money supply slowly over time, but tit became clear in the early 80s that the velocity was not constant at all. Even though

The Federal Reserve System can also be referred to Federal Reserve or simply the FED. The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. The Federal Reserve System was created over 100 years ago in December 23 of 1913. The Federal Reserve System was created in response to a series of financial panics particularly the panic of 1907. The panic of 1907 showed the need for central control of the monetary system if crises are to be avoided. Many events such as the Great Depression and the Great Recession led to the expansion of the role and responsibility of the Federal Reserve System. The U.S Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act. The three key objectives for the monetary

This is an example of complicating the policy response. In recent years, a singular emphasis on targeting inflation has come to dominate debates on macroeconomic policy with strong calls to leave monetary and foreign exchange policies to an independent central bank. However, whatever the specific tools employed and regardless of who controls them, fighting inflation usually leads to higher unemployment and the risk of lower investment and growth in the medium term.

The Federal Reserve exercises its power to stimulate stable employment economies and economic prices. The pursuit of the required employment rate and the creation of price stability, the Federal Reserve can increase or decrease the interest rate.

The first to be discussed is the discount rate is the interest rate charged by the Federal Reserve to banks for short term loan basis. The increase and decrease of the money supply is determined by the discount rate. Discount rate would be used is a bank needed twenty million dollars, the money would be borrowed from the United States treasury but has to be paid back at a interest rate of three percent. This monetary tool would be used with inflation if the expected inflation increases so will the discount rate and vice versus at the same rate remaining equivalent. During periods of time with high unemployment rate the discount rate is lowered in order to counteract high unemployment and to prevent the possibility of a recession. Secondly, there is the ratio reserve. Ratio reserve is the amount of money that has to be kept at a bank on reserve; this amount can be adjusted to back outstanding deposits. Ration reserve creates the marginal money supply at any given moment due to the Fed raising or lowering the reserve requirements. Although it is rarely used to control the money supply it is a tool that can be used. An example of how it would be used would be if Will comes in and deposit one thousand dollars and the reserve amount is ten percent, of that one thousand dollars one hundred will go to the reserve ratio. Allowing the other ninety percent to be used as a money supply for loans and etc. In the case of unemployment and high inflation the Fed has to lower the reserve ratio in order to decrease the unemployment rate and inflation because if the reserve ratio is lower then the economy and the money supply is moving more vividly. Lastly is the open market operations. Open market operations is the act of buying and selling Treasury securities’ between the Fed and certain selected banks in the open market, it is directed by the FOMC. Open market operations would be considered

The primary objective of the Federal Reserve is to stabilize the monetary environment. The Federal Reserve has focused on achieving price stability and maximum employment while avoiding a recession. Within the goals of the dual mandate, the Fed encourages a target inflation rate of 2 percent and the unemployment rate between 4.5 percent and 5.0 percent to maintain a healthy economy. As of today, the inflation rate is 2.3 percent and the unemployment rate is 4.2 percent.

The goals that the Federal Reserve has for its monetary policy is to keep maximum employment along with other reasons. In addition to that another goal the FED has is to stabilize prices and moderate long term interest rates. This is states in the first line of the article. Congress supplied these goals to the Federal Reserve Act.

One form of direct control can be exercised by adjusting the legal reserve ratio (the proportion of its deposits that a member bank must hold in its reserve account), and as a result, increasing or decreasing the amount of new loans that the commercial banks can make. Because loans give rise to new deposits, the possible money supply is, in this way, expanded or reduced. This policy tool has not been used too much in recent years. The money supply may also be influenced through manipulation of the discount rate, which is the rate if interest charged by the Federal Reserve banks on short-term secured loans to member banks. Since these loans are typically sought to maintain reserves at their required level, an increase in the cost of such loans has an effect similar to that of increasing the reserve requirement. The classic method of indirect control is through open-market operations, first widely used in the 1920s and now used daily to make some adjustment to the market. Federal Reserve bank sales or purchases of securities on the open market tend to reduce or increase the size of commercial bank reserves. When the Federal Reserve sells securities, the purchasers pay for them with checks drawn on their deposits, thereby reducing the reserves of the banks on which the checks are drawn. The three instruments of control explained above have been conceded to be more effective in preventing inflation in times of high economic activity than in bringing about revival from a

The FED can only pursue one target at any given time. For example, if they are targeting interest rates, exchange rates will fluctuate and vice versa. The FED’s influence over real interest rates is weaker than that of nominal interest rates and stabilizing the economy is more important than stabilizing interest rates.

We learned last week that the Open Market Operations was the Federal reserves most often used tool to enact an expansionary monetary policy. However, that is not to imply that this is an exact science and the only way the Federal Reserve keeps control over the economy.To answer the question; Why the simultaneous targeting of the money supply and interest rates is sometimes impossible to achieve?

Chapter 17 is about monetary policy targets and goals. In terms of history, the FED was generally ineffective in carrying out the monetary policy targets and goals because they had been engaging in pro-cyclical monetary policies. This has an adverse effect in the economy. By late 1980 until 2008, the Fed had switched to anti-cyclical monetary policy effectively declined the volatility of the economy.

This gathering of governor was joined by leading academics, thought leaders, and commentators on monetary policy. The world of modern central banking and global finance had now entered a new phase of even more obvious artificiality and distortions. According to the author, Mohamed. El-Erian, “Ones whose skillful management of the price and quantity of money in an economy was key to containing inflation, promoting economic growth, and avoiding financial crises.” Since the global financial crisis of 2008, central bank has ventured, by necessity but not by the choice. They set the interest rates higher. For an unusually prolonged period, the central bank was bold policy experimentation. During that time, many of the economists thought that central banks had been forced to operate, and many of them wondered about it consequences. From the beginning of the financial crisis, there was the hope that courageous and responsive central banks would succeed in handing off the baton to high growth, robust job creation, price stability, and financial system. The world was in the process of grow out of its debts problems avoiding the debt defaults because the policy making entities were finally in the economic governance responsibilities and with the job returning and economic prosperity. The world changed in two important ways: one had to do with the analytics of central banking,

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.