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Journal Article
Against the tide: Malcolm Bryan and the introduction of monetary aggregate targets
Monetary policy was freed from the straightjacket of pegging U.S. Treasury interest rates following the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord in 1951. This newfound freedom led to a growing debate inside and outside the Federal Reserve System about the appropriate measures to use as operating guides. This article examines the contributions of Malcolm Bryan, president of the Atlanta Fed from 1951 through 1965, to this debate and to the evolution of monetary policy in the postaccord era. ; Bryan parted company with most of his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee by trying to steer policy ...
Journal Article
Darryl Francis and the Making of Monetary Policy, 1966-1975
Darryl Francis was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from 1966 to 1975. Throughout those years he was a leading critic of U.S. monetary policy. Francis argued in policy meetings and public venues that monetary policy should focus on maintaining a stable price level. In contrast, most policy- makers at the time believed it possible to exploit a trade-off between unemployment and inflation. While Francis attributed inflation directly to excessive growth of the money stock, other policymakers blamed labor and product market failures, fiscal policy, and commodity price shocks. ...
Journal Article
The federal government's budget surplus: Cause for celebration?
Projected surpluses in the federal government's budget have generated fanfare sometimes verging on euphoria. Because the federal government last had a surplus in 1969, a projected surplus for fiscal year 1998 and later years is being viewed as something of a milestone. Unlike policies of the last three decades that have at least paid lip service to lowering the deficit, policy options now may include ways to use the surplus. Some have called for lowering taxes and others for increasing expenditures or retiring federal government debt. ; This article discusses the importance of going beyond ...
Journal Article
Darryl Francis and the making of monetary policy, 1966-1975
Darryl Francis was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from 1966 to 1975. Throughout those years he was a leading critic of U.S. monetary policy. Francis argued in policy meetings and public venues that monetary policy should focus on maintaining a stable price level. In contrast, most policymakers at the time believed it possible to exploit a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. While Francis attributed inflation directly to excessive growth of the money stock, other policymakers blamed labor and product market failures, fiscal policy, and commodity price shocks. ...
Journal Article
What remains of monetarism?
In October 1979 the Federal Reserve, in an attempt to curb double-digit inflation, announced that it would place more weight on monetary aggregates in policy deliberations. This policy shift helped reduce inflation but sent the economy into a recession. Three years later the Fed abandoned monetary targets and returned to targeting the federal funds rate. ; Monetary growth targets currently play no official role in the setting of U.S. monetary policy. Is such disregard justified by the data any more today than it was twenty years ago? This article provides a historical perspective on the ...
Journal Article
The rise and fall of a policy rule: monetarism at the St. Louis Fed, 1968-1986
From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis played an important and highly visible role in the development and advocacy of stabilization policy based on the targeting of monetary aggregates. Research conducted at the St. Louis Bank extended earlier monetarist analysis that had focused on the role of money in explaining economic activity in the long run. Their success in finding apparently robust, stable relationships in both long- and short-run data led monetarists to apply long-run propositions to short-run policy questions, effectively competing with alternative views ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy and recent business-cycle experience
Some critics of recent monetary policy have focused on slow M2 growth, claiming that the Federal Reserve is too interested in price stability and is forsaking its growth mandate. Others criticize the Fed for achieving price stability too cautiously and urge the adoption of a rule that seeks to eliminate inflation more quickly. ; R. W. Hafer, Joseph Haslag and Scott Hein examine two alternative monetary policies and gauge their expected impacts on economic activity. Both policies are simulated over the period 198792. One policy, a GNP-targeting rule similar to one proposed by Bennett McCallum, ...
Journal Article
The new monetary aggregates