The Fourth Branch The Federal Reserve S Unlikely Rise To Power And Influence

Shrouded in mystery, managed behind closed doors, and the subject of both awe and derision, the Federal Reserve is commonly referred to as the fourth branch of our federal government, with wide-ranging influence over monetary policy, and by extension, banking, price levels, employment rates, and economic growth, income, and wealth. Bernard Shull traces the fascinating and improbable history of this institution from its establishment by an Act of Congress in 1913 to the present day. His careful analysis reveals a paradoxical phenomenon: focusing on three periods of economic stress (the inflation and deflation following World War I, the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression, and the stagflation and volatility of the 1970s and 1980s), Shull argues that despite convincing evidence that the Fed contributed to these crises, it has consistently emerged from each more powerful and influential than before. Setting the current profile of the Fed against its evolutionary context, The Fourth Branch sheds new light on the Fed's character and its impact on our economic, political, and cultural history. In many ways, the story of the Fed is the classic American epic: turning adversity into opportunity, responding to threat by innovating and adapting. Even today, under attack by liberals and conservatives alike—in the wake of the stock market bubble, economic recession, and rampant job loss—the Fed is poised to remain strong long after the tenure of legendary Chairman Alan Greenspan. Setting the current profile of the Fed against its evolutionary context, The Fourth Branch sheds new light on the Fed's character and its impact on our economic, political, and cultural history.

Imagining the Fed traces a six-decade struggle to shape the Federal Reserve's policymaking organs, the Washington-based Board and the Federal Open Market Committee. Conventional wisdom holds that Congress ended the system's struggle in 1935 by granting the Board a voting majority on the open market committee, establishing its Fed primacy. Yet, this book shows that the Fed's struggle continued flaring to yield consequential changes until 1970, when the modern Fed emerged. Nicolas Thompson explores how the Fed's evolution from a weak and fragmented sprawl into the world's most powerful central bank paralleled broader changes in the American polity. The rise and fall of hegemonic political parties remade the Board and elevated its Fed position, while the wars of the twentieth century concentrated Fed power in New York. When peace returned, however, system agents inherited a central bank that veered from the law, inviting renewed struggle. This process continued into the 1960s, when an ascendant Democratic Party loaded the Board with economists, who remade it in their image. Later partisan choices to launch unfunded wars at home and abroad unleashed inflationary forces which severed the dollar's link to gold. Freed from its golden fetters, monetary policy emerged as a domestic policy realm and Fed power durably concentrated in a new Board technocracy.

Indhold: The Foundations of American Government; Federalism American Style; Elections in the United States; The American Party System; The Chief Executive; The legislarive Branch; The Bureaucracy; The Judiciary; The American Secret

An in-depth look at the history, leadership, and structure of the Federal Reserve Bank The independence of the Federal Reserve is considered a cornerstone of its identity, crucial for keeping monetary policy decisions free of electoral politics. But do we really understand what is meant by "Federal Reserve independence"? Using scores of examples from the Fed's rich history, The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve shows that much common wisdom about the nation's central bank is inaccurate. Legal scholar and financial historian Peter Conti-Brown provides an in-depth look at the Fed's place in government, its internal governance structure, and its relationships to such individuals and groups as the president, Congress, economists, and bankers. Exploring how the Fed regulates the global economy and handles its own internal politics, and how the law does—and does not—define the Fed's power, Conti-Brown captures and clarifies the central bank's defining complexities. He examines the foundations of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which established a system of central banks, and the ways that subsequent generations have redefined the organization. Challenging the notion that the Fed Chair controls the organization as an all-powerful technocrat, he explains how institutions and individuals—within and outside of government—shape Fed policy. Conti-Brown demonstrates that the evolving mission of the Fed—including systemic risk regulation, wider bank supervision, and as a guardian against inflation and deflation—requires a reevaluation of the very way the nation's central bank is structured. Investigating how the Fed influences and is influenced by ideologies, personalities, law, and history, The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve offers a uniquely clear and timely picture of one of the most important institutions in the United States and the world.

Covering an exhaustive range of information about the five boroughs, the first edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City was a success by every measure, earning worldwide acclaim and several awards for reference excellence, and selling out its first printing before it was officially published. But much has changed since the volume first appeared in 1995: the World Trade Center no longer dominates the skyline, a billionaire businessman has become an unlikely three-term mayor, and urban regeneration—Chelsea Piers, the High Line, DUMBO, Williamsburg, the South Bronx, the Lower East Side—has become commonplace. To reflect such innovation and change, this definitive, one-volume resource on the city has been completely revised and expanded. The revised edition includes 800 new entries that help complete the story of New York: from Air Train to E-ZPass, from September 11 to public order. The new material includes broader coverage of subject areas previously underserved as well as new maps and illustrations. Virtually all existing entries—spanning architecture, politics, business, sports, the arts, and more—have been updated to reflect the impact of the past two decades. The more than 5,000 alphabetical entries and 700 illustrations of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City convey the richness and diversity of its subject in great breadth and detail, and will continue to serve as an indispensable tool for everyone who has even a passing interest in the American metropolis.

An "insightful" (Publishers Weekly) history of the development of American capitalism and the men who made it great. Most Americans are familiar with the political history of the United States, but there is another history woven all through it, a largely forgotten history—the story of the money men. Acclaimed historian H. W. Brands brings them back to life: J. P. Morgan, who stabilized a foundering U.S. Treasury in 1907; Alexander Hamilton, who founded the first national bank, and Nicholas Biddle, under whose directorship it failed; Jay Cooke, who helped to finance the Union war effort through his then-innovative strategy of selling bonds to ordinary Americans; and Jay Gould, who tried to corner the market on gold in 1869 and as a result brought about Black Friday and fled for his life.

This meticulously documented work sets forth the major causes of the greatest asset bubble in world economic history—the American housing bubble, which began in 1940 and collapsed in 2007. In the aftermath of the American housing collapse in 2007, many ask why. The Great American Housing Bubble: The Road to Collapse asks a different and more fundamental question—how the bubble was created in the first place. To answer that question, it examines the causes, both political and economic, of the American housing bubble, created between 1940 and 2007. Those causes encompass everything from federal income tax subsidies for housing to local exclusionary policies, banking, accounting, real estate appraisal, and credit agency rating practices and policies. The book also takes into account the impact of greed, government regulation, speculation, and psychology—including blind faith in investment advisors—on the creation of the greatest asset bubble in the economic history of the world. The author takes a comparative historical approach, examining the current crisis in the light of notorious bubbles of the past. In the end, he concludes that the events precipitating the most recent collapse can be traced, at least in part, not to too little government regulation, but to too much.