The Consumer Price Index and the Measurement of Recent Inflation

macroeconomics, consumer price index, inflation

Measuring short-run inflation for central bankers - commentary

Inflation (Finance) ; Monetary policy ; Banks and banking, Central

Quantitative Easing: Entrance and Exit Strategies

Apparently, it can happen here. On December 16, 2008, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), in an effort to fight what was shaping up to be the worst recession since 1937, reduced the federal funds rate to nearly zero.1 From then on, with all of its conventional ammunition spent, the Federal Reserve was squarely in the brave new world of quantitative easing. Chairman Ben Bernanke tried to call the Fed’s new policies credit easing, probably to differentiate them from what the Bank of Japan had done earlier in the decade, but the label did not stick.Recession, Federal Reserve, open market committee, banking policy, deflation, monetary policy

How Central Should the Central Bank Be?

About six years ago, I published a small book entitled The Quiet Revolution (Blinder 2004). Though its subtitle was Central Banking Goes Modern, I never imagined the half of it. Since March 2008, the Federal Reserve has gone post-modern with a bewildering variety of unprecedented actions that have either changed the nature and scope of the central bank’s role or stretched it beyond the breaking point, depending on your point of view. And that leads straight to the central question of this essay: What should--and shouldn’t--the Federal Reserve do?Federal reserve bank, monetary policy, central bank