Distinguished economist Michael D. Bordo argues for the importance of monetary stability and monetary rules, offering theoretical, empirical, and historical perspectives to support his case. He shows how the pursuit of stable monetary policy guided by central banks following rule-like behavior produces low and stable inflation, stable real performance, and encourages financial stability. In contrast, he explains how the failure to adhere to rules that produce monetary stability will inevitably produce the dire consequences of real, nominal, and financial instability. Bordo also examines the performance of the Federal Reserve and he reviews the history of monetary policy during the Great Depression.
This book, first published in 1993, examines in detail the bureaucratic and political manoeuvring surrounding the enactment of banking and monetary reforms in the 1930s. Although banking reform influenced the politics of both the Hoover and Roosevelt presidencies, most surveys devote only a few pages to monetary disturbances and the reforms passed as a result.
Herbert Hoover, as Secretary of Commerce, and Benjamin Strong, as Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, played a critical role in the formulation of American monetary policy during the 1920s. Yet little attention has been given to the relationship between them—at first cooperative, then increasingly one of conflict and factionalism—or to the impact of that relationship on policy formulation. This book sheds new light on their roles in policy making and relates those roles to larger conflicts over where policy should be made, how the Federal Reserve System should be structured, and the balance that should be struck between international, national, and regional considerations. Focusing on the Hoover-Strong relationship from a political rather than a purely economic perspective, the book's scope includes both domestic and international aspects of Federal Reserve policy formulation. New sources have enabled the author to provide both fresh details and a broader interpretation. Elaborating on the belief that the Depression resulted from policies developed during the autumn of 1927, the author contends that the foundation for those policies was laid with America's decision to underwrite the Dawes plan, the decision to underwrite England's return to the gold standard, and the involvement in European monetary stabilization—all issues over which Hoover and Strong disagreed.
Forrest Capie is an eminent economic historian who has published extensively on a wide range of topics, with an emphasis on banking and monetary history, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also in other areas such as tariffs and the interwar economy. He is a former editor of the Economic History Review, one of the leading academic journals in this discipline. Under the steely editorship of Geoffrey Wood, this book brings together a stellar line of of contributors - including Charles Goodhart, Harold James, Michael Bordo, Barry Eichengreen, Charles Calomiris, and Anna Schwartz. The book analyzes many of the mainstream themes in economic and financial history - monetary policy, international financial regulation, economic performance, exchange rate systems, international trade, banking and financial markets - where historical perspectives are considered important. The current wave of globalisation has stimulated interest in many of these areas as ‘lessons of history’ are sought. These themes also reflect the breadth of Capie’s work in terms of time periods and topics.
Central banks have emerged as the key players in national and international policy making. This book explores their evolution since World War II in 20 industrial countries. The study considers the mix of economic, political and institutional forces that have affected central bank behaviour and its relationship with government. The analysis reconciles vastly different views about the role of central banks in the making of economic policies. One finding is that monetary policy is an evolutionary process.
In this book Garbade, a former analyst at a primary dealer and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, traces the evolution of open market operations, Treasury debt management, and the microstructure of the US government securities markets following the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve. This volume examines how these operations evolved, responding both to external forces and to one another. Utilising a vast scope of primary material, the work provides insight into how officials fashioned the instruments, facilities, and procedures needed to advance their policy objectives in light of their novel freedoms and responsibilities. Students and scholars of macroeconomics, financial regulation, and the history of central banking and the Federal Reserve will find this volume a welcome addition to Garbade's earlier studies of Treasury debt operations during World War I, the 1920s, and the Great Depression and since 1983.