This book examines issues and implications of Federal Reserve monetary policy in the US during the century of its history and whether it has been a protector of the country's financial well-being or a tool of Wall Street. It looks at the behavior of the Federal Reserve system within the context of the current interest in limiting its freedom to act independently. It discusses the origins of central banking in the US, the early years of the Federal Reserve, its role during the war and each decade since the 1950s, and its role during the Great Recession and financial crisis, then issues from the past and problems for the future, including the expanding role of the Federal Reserve; the connection between the Federal Reserve and market interest rates; the Federal Reserve, the Great Recession, and inflation; implications of the Federal Reserve becoming a major supplier of the equivalent of short-term debt in the form of bank reserves that pay interest; the impact of a continuation of zero or very low interest rates at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century on the ability of the Federal Reserve to conduct monetary policy; how the net worth of a central bank should be calculated using data from the Federal Reserve; problems of restoring the Federal Reserve to an asset and liability balance sheet more in line with the former share of the national economy; and the potential future for cryptocurrencies and the possible role of central banks. Annotation ©2019 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Thomas R Saving is Director Emeritus, Private Enterprise Research Center and University Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus, Texas A&M University. He has been elected to the post of President of the Western Economics Association, the Southern Economics Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education.
Saving received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1960. Prior to joining the economics faculty at Texas A&M University in 1968, he was on the faculty at University of Washington in Seattle and Michigan State University. He attained the rank of full professor at Michigan State University in 1966, six years after the award of this Ph.D. in 1960.
In 2000, President Clinton appointed him as a Public Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. On May 2, 2001, President Bush named him to the bipartisan President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. On April 19, 2006, President Bush appointed him to an unprecedented second term as a Public Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds which expired in December 2007.
His early research was on Monetary Theory and Policy. During that time, he co-authored two books with fellow colleague Boris P Pesek, Money, Wealth and Economic Theory, Macmillan, 1967 and Foundations of Money and Banking, Macmillan, 1968, and published 20 monetary theory articles in major journals. After a period of research on the benefit of markets in solving the pressing issues in health care and Social Security when he was a co-editor of Medicare Reform: Issues and Answers, University of Chicago Press, 1999, the co-author of The Economics of Medicare Reform, W E Upjohn Institute, 2000 and The Diagnosis and Treatment of Medicare, AEI Press, 2007, he returned to his first love, monetary economics. He has served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and was a co-editor of Economic Inquiry. He has published editorials in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
