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THE POWER AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE

Peter Conti-Brown

Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2016, 347 pgs., index, bibliography, notes

 
 

Reviewer

 
 

Preface:

The author states his purpose and thesis: 'This book is an effort to cut through that morass of law and history. The focus, as the title indicates, is especially on how the Fed gained and uses its extraordinar power over the global economy and what is meant by the often invoked but rarely explained term 'independence".
And further: "This book steps behind the scribbles to depct the Federal Reserve, its internal structure, its external pressures, and the technical and nontechnical ways it makes its many policies, with more clarity than these questions usually receive." And, "This book is an effort to push back against the certainty of those absolutist narratives. To understand the unique place the Fed occupies at the intersection of financial markets and the U.S. government requires a dive into the very meaning of this curious intellectual and institutional construction, Federal Reserve independence."

 
 

Introduction

 
 

Part I - The Federal Reserve Is a "They, Not an "it"

 
 

Chapter 1 - The Three Foundings of the Federal Reserve

 
 

Chapter 2 - Leadership and Institutinal Change: From Periphery to Power

 
 

Chapter 3 - Central Banking by Committee: The Authority of the Fed's Board of Governors

 
 

Chapter 4 - The"Double Government" of the Federal Reserve; The Economists and the Lawyers

 
 

Chapter 5 - The Vestigial and Unconstitutional Federal Reserve Banks

 
 

Part II: The Five Hundred Hats of the Federal Reserve

 
 

Chapter 6: - Practicing Monetary Policy: The Rise and Fall of the Chaperone

 
 

Chapter 7: - The Once and Future Federal Reserve: The Fed's Banking Functions

 
 

Part III - The Sirens of the Federal Reserve

 
 

Chapter 8: - The President and the Federal Reserve: The Limits of Law and the Power of Relationships

 
 

Chapter 9: - Congress and the Fed: The Curious Case of the Fed's Budgetary Autonomy

 
 

Chapter 10: - Club Fed: The Communities of the Federal Reserve

 
 

Part IV - The Democratic Demands of the Fed Governance: Reforming the Fed by Choosing the Chaperone

 
 

Chapter 11: Proposals

In this chapter the author evaluates various proposed 'reforms', some of which he approves or offers himself, and others which he finds detrimental.

 
 

Conclusion: The Freemasons and the Federal Reserve

 
   

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