The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23,1913,with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act,after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years,events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is a committee within the Federal Reserve System that is charged under United States law with overseeing the nation's open market operations. This Federal Reserve committee makes key decisions about interest rates and the growth of the United States money supply. Under the terms of the original Federal Reserve Act,each of the Federal Reserve banks was authorized to buy and sell in the open market bonds and short term obligations of the United States Government,bank acceptances,cable transfers,and bills of exchange. Hence,the reserve banks were at times bidding against each other in the open market. In 1922,an informal committee was established to execute purchases and sales. The Banking Act of 1933 formed an official FOMC.
The Taylor rule is a monetary policy targeting rule. The rule was proposed in 1992 by American economist John B. Taylor for central banks to use to stabilize economic activity by appropriately setting short-term interest rates. The rule considers the federal funds rate,the price level and changes in real income. The Taylor rule computes the optimal federal funds rate based on the gap between the desired (targeted) inflation rate and the actual inflation rate;and the output gap between the actual and natural output level. According to Taylor,monetary policy is stabilizing when the nominal interest rate is higher/lower than the increase/decrease in inflation. Thus the Taylor rule prescribes a relatively high interest rate when actual inflation is higher than the inflation target.
George William Miller was an American businessman and investment banker who served as the 65th United States secretary of the treasury from 1979 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party,he also served as the 11th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1978 to 1979. Miller was the first person to hold both of those posts.
William McChesney Martin Jr. was an American business executive who served as the 9th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1951 to 1970,making him the longest holder of that position. He was nominated to the post by President Harry S. Truman and reappointed by four of his successors. Martin,who once considered becoming a Presbyterian minister,was described by a Washington journalist as "the happy Puritan".
Stanley Fischer is an Israeli-American economist who served as the 20th vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017. Fischer previously served as the 8th governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013. Born in Northern Rhodesia,he holds dual citizenship in Israel and the United States. He previously served as First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and as Chief Economist of the World Bank. On January 10,2014,President Barack Obama nominated Fischer to the position of Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve. He is a senior advisor at BlackRock. On September 6,2017,Stanley Fischer announced that he was resigning as Vice-Chair for personal reasons effective October 13,2017,two days before his 74th birthday.
Alan Stuart Blinder is an American economics professor at Princeton University and is listed among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. He is a leading macro-economist,politically liberal,and a champion of Keynesian economics and policies.
John Brian Taylor is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University,and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist who served as the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Federal Reserve,he was appointed a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. During his tenure as chairman,Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis,for which he was named the 2009 Time Person of the Year. Before becoming Federal Reserve chairman,Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the Department of Economics there from 1996 to September 2002,when he went on public service leave. Bernanke was awarded the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences,jointly with Douglas Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig,"for research on banks and financial crises",more specifically for his analysis of the Great Depression.
Allan H. Meltzer was an American economist and Allan H. Meltzer Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and Institute for Politics and Strategy in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. Meltzer specialized on studying monetary policy and the US Federal Reserve System,and authored several academic papers and books on the development and applications of monetary policy,and about the history of central banking in the US. Together with Karl Brunner,he created the Shadow Open Market Committee:a monetarist council that deeply criticized the Federal Open Market Committee.
Jordi Galí is a Spanish macroeconomist who is regarded as one of the main figures in New Keynesian macroeconomics today. He is currently the director of the Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a Research Professor at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. After obtaining his doctorate from MIT in 1989 under the supervision of Olivier Blanchard,he held faculty positions at Columbia University and New York University before moving to Barcelona.
Charles L. Evans is the former ninth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago,serving from 2007 to 2023. In that capacity,he served on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC),the Federal Reserve System's monetary policy-making body.
Lael Brainard is an American economist serving as the 14th director of the National Economic Council since February 21,2023. She previously served as the 22nd vice chair of the Federal Reserve between May 2022 and February 2023. Prior to her term as vice chair,Brainard served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,taking office in 2014. Before her appointment to the Federal Reserve,she served as the under secretary of the treasury for international affairs from 2010 to 2013.
Sir Vito Antonio Muscatelli is the Principal of the University of Glasgow and one of the United Kingdom's top economists.
William C. Dudley is an American economist who served as the president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2009 to 2018 and as vice-chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. He was appointed to the position on January 27,2009,following the confirmation of his predecessor,Timothy F. Geithner,as United States Secretary of the Treasury.
Jerome Hayden "Jay" Powell is an American attorney and investment banker who has served since 2018 as the 16th chair of the Federal Reserve.
Jagjit Singh Chadha (Punjabi:ਜਗਜੀਤਸਿੰਘਚਢਾ,born 1 December 1966 in West Yorkshire is a British economist who is the Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
David I. Meiselman was an American economist. Among his contributions to the field of economics are his work on the term structure of interest rates,the foundation today of the implementation of monetary policy by major central banks,and his work with Milton Friedman on the impact of monetary policy on the performance of the economy and inflation.
Raphael W. Bostic is an American economist,academic,and public servant who has served as the 15th president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta since 2017. During his academic career,Bostic served as chair of the Department of Governance,Management,and the Policy Process at the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California.
Philip Nathan Jefferson is an American economist who has been serving as 23rd Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve since September 2023. He has been a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since 2022. He was nominated for the position by President Joe Biden in January 2022,and was confirmed by the Senate in May 2022. Upon taking office,he became the fourth Black man to serve on the board.
