Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.
This book addresses the welfare gains and costs of accumulating foreign exchange reserves and the implications for the functioning of the global financial system. The tremendous growth of central bank reserves has led to an increased focus on raising returns in addition to the traditional preference central banks have for maintaining liquid portfolios. Issues such as asset and currency diversification, the impact of new accounting rules and the profit distribution agreements with the government are analysed, adding new insights to the current debate on the optimal size of central bank reserves. This book brings together a wide range of experts from central banks, investment banks and the academic community.
Renowned economist Edwin Kemmerer narrates the inception and history of the Federal Reserve System, while outlining its functions and purposes in the economy of the United States. The Federal Reserve was conceived as an antidote to a succession of financial panics in the late 19th and early 20th century. The great panic of 1907 was, for government legislators weary of the chaos and joblessness brought by such volatility, the final straw. For a time J. P. Morgan, a banking magnate, aggressively plowed funds to stabilize, avert and mitigate the chaos. However a longer term, government-backed solution was needed: in 1913, the Federal Reserve was formally established. Edwin Kemmerer was already influential in academia at the time of the Federal Reserve's creation, and broadly supported the concept of the 'central bank' as a stabilizing force. The order brought to finance by centralization, together with a pegging of the dollar to gold, formed lifelong pillars of the author's economic philosophy. Although the gold standard in particular has since fell from favor, many of the guiding principles in this book stand in modern day economics, and its historical value is undoubted. Together with a comprehensive account of the Federal Reserve, the Appendices of this book contain relevant law of the era. The Federal Reserve Act, together with salient portions of the Farm Loan Act (an early exemplar of the post-Fed system of credit) are included with the author's notes. In all, this book offers readers an in-depth justification and narration of the Fed's creation and early years.
The collection of essays, written by 25 professional economists, deals with history, theory, policy and contemporary problems of US monetary and banking institutions.
A decade-long diversification of official reserves into riskier investments came to an abrupt end at the beginning of the global financial crisis, when many central bank reserve managers started to withdraw their deposits from the banking sector in an apparent flight to quality and safety. We estimate that reserve managers pulled around US$500 billion of deposits and other investments from the banking sector. Although clearly not the main cause, this procyclical investment behavior is likely to have contributed to the funding problems of the banking sector, which required offsetting measures by other central banks such as the Federal Reserve and Eurosystem central banks. The behavior highlights a potential conflict between the reserve management and financial stability mandates of central banks. This paper analyzes reserve managers’ actions during the crisis and draws some lessons for strategic asset allocation of reserves going forward.
