Inside the Fed

by Axilrod, Stephen H.

• ISBN13: 9780262015622
• ISBN10: 0262015625
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-18
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Stephen Axilrod is the ultimate Federal Reserve insider. He worked at the Fed's Board of Governors for more than thirty years and after that in private markets and as a consultant on monetary policy.With Inside the Fed, he offers his unique perspective on the inner workings of the Federal Reserve System during the last fifty years-writing about personalities as much as policy-based on his knowledge and observations of every Fed chairman since 1951. This new, post-financial meltdown edition offers his assessment of the Fed's action (and inaction) during the crisis and expanded coverage of the Fed in the Bernanke era. In this revised edition, Axilrod gives an account of the Fed's dramatic, even mind-bending, experiences in the great credit crisis of 2007-2009. He assesses the full range of the Fed's unusual and innovative actions during the crisis and the beginnings of its aftermath. He questions whether the Fed used its monetary and regulatory powers to full effect to minimize and contain the disruption of the nation's-and the world's-financial stability. And, in an entirely new chapter, he evaluates Bernanke's performance through his full first term (as well as the early part of his second) in light of his actions during the crisis. In later chapters he also reevaluates the image, stature, and structure of the Fed in the aftermath of the crisis and the new comprehensive financial legislation subsequently enacted. Great leadership in monetary policy, Axilrod says, is determined not by pure economic sophistication but by the ability to push through political and social barriers to achieve a paradigm shift in policy-and by the courage and bureaucratic moxie to pull it off.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Overview of Policy Management and Managers	p. 7
In Bill Martin's Time	p. 25
Arthur Burns and the Struggle against Inflation	p. 55
The Miller Interlude	p. 77
Paul Volcker and the Victory over Inflation	p. 89
The Greenspan Years, from Stability to Crisis	p. 119
Bernanke and the Response to the Great Credit Crisis	p. 149
The Fed and Its Image	p. 171
Concluding Remarks	p. 189
Chronology of Federal Reserve System Chairman and U.S. Presidents	p. 207
Key Economic Objectives and Monetary Policy Indicators	p. 209
Notes	p. 211
Index	p. 219
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