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.
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.
In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis. Reserve balances are amounts held at the Federal Reserve. Institutions with surplus balances in their accounts lend those balances to institutions in need of larger balances. The federal funds rate is an important benchmark in financial markets and central to the conduct of monetary policy in the United States as it influences a wide range of market interest rates.
Excess reserves are bank reserves held by a bank in excess of a reserve requirement for it set by a central bank.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City is located in Kansas City, Missouri and covers the 10th District of the Federal Reserve, which includes Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and portions of western Missouri and northern New Mexico. It is second only to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in size of geographic area served. Missouri is the only state with two main Federal Reserve Banks; the other is located in St. Louis.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the United States' central bank. Missouri is the only state to have two main Federal Reserve Banks.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve located in Richmond, Virginia. It covers the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and most of West Virginia excluding the Northern Panhandle. Branch offices are located in Baltimore, Maryland and Charlotte, North Carolina. Thomas I. Barkin became president of the Richmond Fed following the retirement of Jeffrey M. Lacker in April 2017. The previous president, J. Alfred Broaddus, retired in 2004.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is one of twelve Federal Reserve Banks that, along with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, make up the Federal Reserve System, the United States' central bank. The Chicago Fed serves the Seventh District, which encompasses the northern portions of Illinois and Indiana, southern Wisconsin, the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and the state of Iowa. In addition to participation in the formulation of monetary policy, each Reserve Bank supervises member banks and bank holding companies, provides financial services to depository institutions and the U.S. government, and monitors economic conditions in its District.
Jeffrey M. Lacker is an American economist and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond until April 4, 2017. He was a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business in Richmond, Virginia.
Thomas Michael Hoenig is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center. He became a director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on April 16, 2012, and served as vice chairman from November 30, 2012 to April 30, 2018. From 1991 to 2011, he served as the eighth chief executive of the Tenth District Federal Reserve Bank, in Kansas City, United States. In 2010, he was serving as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, as one of five of the twelve Federal Reserve Bank presidents that sit on the Committee on a yearly rotating basis. He is known as an "anti-inflation hawk".
This is a list of historical rate actions by the United States Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC controls the supply of credit to banks and the sale of treasury securities. The Federal Open Market Committee meets every two months during the fiscal year. At scheduled meetings, the FOMC meets and makes any changes it sees as necessary, notably to the federal funds rate and the discount rate. The committee may also take actions with a less firm target, such as an increasing liquidity by the sale of a set amount of Treasury bonds, or affecting the price of currencies both foreign and domestic by selling dollar reserves. Jerome Powell is the current chairperson of the Federal Reserve and the FOMC.
James Brian Bullard is the former chief executive officer and 12th president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a position he held from 2008 until August 14, 2023. In July 2023, he was named dean of the Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business at Purdue University.
The U.S. central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in partnership with central banks around the world, took several steps to address the subprime mortgage crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in early 2008: "Broadly, the Federal Reserve’s response has followed two tracks: efforts to support market liquidity and functioning and the pursuit of our macroeconomic objectives through monetary policy." A 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office found that "on numerous occasions in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve Board invoked emergency authority under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to authorize new broad-based programs and financial assistance to individual institutions to stabilize financial markets. Loans outstanding for the emergency programs peaked at more than $1 trillion in late 2008."
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Pittsburgh Branch Office is one of two Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland branch offices. The Pittsburgh Office of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland hosts one of two savings bonds processing sites in the nation. The Pittsburgh branch presides over Jefferson, Monroe and Belmont counties in Ohio, Wetzel, Tyler, Pleasants, Marshall, Ohio, Brooke and Hancock counties in West Virginia, and all of Western Pennsylvania. In 1915 it was revealed that the Pittsburgh branch location was to be the new home of a relocated Cleveland Fed District with a majority vote secured on the board of governors, but the U.S. Attorney General at the time nixed moving the Cleveland, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Boston and Atlanta Federal Reserve Districts, stating that it would instead take an act of Congress to move those district headquarters. Pittsburgh remained a branch location only.
The Structure of the Federal Reserve System is unique among central banks in the world, with both public and private aspects. It is described as "independent within the government" rather than "independent of government".
Nowcasting in economics is the prediction of the very recent past, the present, and the very near future state of an economic indicator. The term is a portmanteau of "now" and "forecasting" and originates in meteorology. Typical measures used to assess the state of an economy, such as gross domestic product (GDP) or inflation, are only determined after a delay and are subject to revision. In these cases, nowcasting such indicators can provide an estimate of the variables before the true data are known. Nowcasting models have been applied most notably in Central Banks, who use the estimates to monitor the state of the economy in real-time as a proxy for official measures.
Robert P. Black, a native of Hickman, Kentucky, was the fifth president (1973–1992) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve System. He was preceded in that position by Aubrey N. Heflin and succeeded by J. Alfred Broaddus (1993–2004) and Jeffrey Lacker.
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.
Mary Colleen Daly is an American economist, who became the 13th President and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on October 1, 2018. She serves on the Federal Reserve's rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee on a rotating basis. Previously, Daly was the Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which she joined as an economist in 1996.
