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Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2016, 347 pgs., index,
bibliography, notes
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Reviewer
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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."
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Introduction
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Part I - The Federal Reserve Is a "They, Not an "it"
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Chapter 1 - The Three Foundings of the Federal Reserve
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Chapter 2 - Leadership and Institutinal Change: From Periphery to Power
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Chapter 3 - Central Banking by Committee: The Authority of the Fed's
Board of Governors
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Chapter 4 - The"Double Government" of the Federal Reserve;
The Economists and the Lawyers
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Chapter 5 - The Vestigial and Unconstitutional Federal Reserve Banks
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Part II: The Five Hundred Hats of the Federal Reserve
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Chapter 6: - Practicing Monetary Policy: The Rise and Fall of the
Chaperone
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Chapter 7: - The Once and Future Federal Reserve: The Fed's Banking
Functions
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Part III - The Sirens of the Federal Reserve
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Chapter 8: - The President and the Federal Reserve: The Limits of Law
and the Power of Relationships
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Chapter 9: - Congress and the Fed: The Curious Case of the Fed's
Budgetary Autonomy
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Chapter 10: - Club Fed: The Communities of the Federal Reserve
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Part IV - The Democratic Demands of the Fed Governance: Reforming the
Fed by Choosing the Chaperone
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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.
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Conclusion: The Freemasons and the Federal Reserve
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