Monetary Politics

When the Federal Reserve celebrated its centennial in December 2013, it bore only passing resemblance to the institution created by Democrats, Progressives, and Populists a century before. In the wake of the devastating banking Panic of 1907, a Democratic Congress and President Woodrow Wilson enacted the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, creating a decentralized system of currency and credit, and sidestepping Americans' long-standing distrust of a central bank. After the Fed failed to prevent and arguably caused the Great Depression of the 1930s, lawmakers rewrote the act, taking steps to centralize control of monetary policy in Washington, DC, while granting the Fed some independence within the government. Decades later in 2007, another global financial crisis retested the Fed's capacity to overcome policy mistakes and prevent financial collapse. Congress again responded by significantly revamping the Fed's authority, bolstering the Fed's financial regulatory responsibilities while requiring more transparency and limiting the Fed's exigent role as the lender of last resort. By the end of its first century, the Federal Reserve had become the crucial player sustaining and steering the nation's and, to a large extent, the world's economic and financial well-being — a remarkable progression given the Fed's limited institutional beginnings.

What explains the Federal Reserve's existential transformation? In this book, we explore the political and economic catalysts that fueled the development of the Fed over its first century. Economic historians have provided excellent accounts of the Fed's evolution, focusing on the successes and failures of monetary policy. Still, little has been written about why or when politicians wrestle with the Fed, each other, and the president over monetary policy, and who wins these political contests over the powers, autonomy, and governance of the Fed, or why. Moreover, in the wake of economic and financial debacles for which Congress and the public often blame the Fed, lawmakers respond paradoxically, amending the act to expand the Fed's powers and further concentrate control in Washington. Why do Congress and the president reward the Fed with new powers and punish it for poor performance? In this book, we contextualize Congress's existential role in driving the evolution of the Fed — uncovering the complex and sometimes-hidden role of Congress in historical efforts to construct, sustain, and reform the Federal Reserve.

By concentrating on Congress's relationship with the Fed, we challenge the most widely held tenet about the modern Fed: central bankers independently craft monetary policy, free from short-term political interference. Instead, we suggest that Congress and the Fed are interdependent. From atop Capitol Hill, Congress depends on the Fed to both steer the economy and absorb public blame when the economy falters. Indeed, over the Fed's first century, Congress has delegated increasing degrees of responsibility to the Fed for managing the nation's economy. But by centralizing power in the hands of the Fed, lawmakers can more credibly blame the Fed for poor economic outcomes, insulating themselves electorally and potentially diluting public anger at Congress.

In turn, the Fed remains dependent on legislative support. Because lawmakers frequently have revised the Federal Reserve Act over its first century, central bankers (despite claims of independence) recognize that Congress circumscribes the Fed's alleged policy autonomy. Fed power — and its capacity and credibility to take unpopular but necessary policy steps — is contingent on securing as well as maintaining broad political and public support. Throughout the book, we highlight the interdependence of these two institutions, exploring the political-economic logic that shapes lawmakers' periodic efforts to revamp the Fed's governing law.

The concentration of monetary control in Washington has been politically costly for the Federal Reserve, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession and continuing into the 2016 presidential campaign. Beginning in 2008, the Fed's DC-based Board of Governors vastly expanded the breadth of monetary policy. The Fed extended and stretched its emergency lending powers, purchased unprecedented levels of government, mortgage, and other debt, and more generally, played a critical role in the selective extension of credit to US industry and finance — often working closely with the US Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank of New York (one of the Fed's twelve regional reserve banks that share power with the Board to make monetary policy). Those choices, which at one point more than quadrupled the size of the Fed's balance sheet, reinserted the Fed into the midst of political discussions about fiscal policy, and more existentially, how far and in what ways the central bank should intervene to prevent and contain financial crises as well as bolster economic growth.

By extending credit to specific institutions and demographic cohorts, the Fed's actions during and after the 2007 crisis blurred the line between monetary and fiscal policy, making the central bank a target of critics across the ideological spectrum, tarnishing its reputation. Over 90 percent of respondents in public opinion polls in the late 1990s during the "Great Moderation" (a nearly quarter-century period of low and stable inflation) applauded the performance of the Federal Reserve as either excellent or good. As shown in figure 1.1, less than a third of the public approved of the Fed at the height of the Great Recession a decade later in 2009. Even the perennially hated Internal Revenue Service polled higher. Liberals and conservatives criticized the lack of transparency surrounding the Fed's emergency lending programs. Conservatives objected to the Fed's large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs), on the unproven grounds that the Fed was foolishly stoking inflation. And while many Democrats welcomed the Fed's focus on reducing unemployment, Republicans pushed for eliminating the employment component of the Fed's dual mandate — a bank-friendly move that would force the Fed to concentrate exclusively on price stability.

Intense partisan and ideological criticism of the Fed made it harder for President Barack Obama to secure Senate confirmation of his appointments to the Fed, even after Democrats in November 2013 revamped Senate procedures to allow simple majorities to block filibusters of Obama's nominees. Nor did the judiciary defer to the Federal Reserve: the Supreme Court in 2010 refused to come to the defense of the central bank when Bloomberg News sued to force disclosure of the identities of borrowers from the Fed's discount window. And in the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald J. Trump accused chair Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve of...