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Federal Reserve System and Monetary Policy

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Federal Reserve System and Monetary policy Amir Jahangir Federal Reserve System and Monetary policy Introduction United States Federal Reserve system, also known as Federal Reserve or simply “Fed” is the United States central banking system. The Federal Reserve took inception in 1913, after the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act. The United States Congress has mandated three macroeconomic objectives to the Federal Reserve. These are minimum levels of unemployment, prices stability and keeping in check the rates of interests. Over the years, the role of Federal Reserve has expanded. It now formulates the country’s monetary policies, conducts supervision and regulation of the banking institutions, maintenance of the financial …show more content…

The purpose of its creation was pretty straight-forward, that is, to prevent failures in banking (Meltzer & Allan, 2010). During the time of its inception, the United States had gone through a vicious banking crisis in 1907. The crisis gained importance as it was observed how Knickerbockers Trust failed to receive support from its peers, even after voluntarily seeking for it. It ultimately faced collapse due to failure in receiving support. This also had a significant influence on the psychology of the public as the peers of Knickerbockers apart from not recuing it, also cancelled payments to each other. The New York Stock Exchange collapsed by fifty per cent until liquidity was injected by the initiatives of financier J.P. Morgan which then relieved the situation to some extent. The legislators then in response vehemently advocated putting in place a central banking system, which would be able to provide liquidity in the case of a wholesale downfall. It can be said with hindsight that the machinery back then used to be very sophisticated. The Wall Street Journal also published a comprehensive fourteen-part series which emphasized on the need for a central banking system. The idea received further endorsements from the public groups and trade organizations. Hence the Federal Reserve was born. It was meant to be a politically autonomous institution that would provide stability to the financial system, protect the

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