Product Description

The Federal Reserve system was designed, built and operated as an agency that forced its policies on American banks. The banks in turn had the power to push around the real economy. Now the Federal Reserve finds itself in a world where banks don't matter as much. Markets set interest rates, markets determine liquidity and markets help or hinder the plans of businessmen. Markets are unpredictable, international and, worst of all, they have their own information systems that do not follow the rules of banking or bank supervision. In response, the Federal Reseve has reinvented itself in a way not yet understood even by sophisticated investors. This text offers a look at the "new" Federal Reserve: what it does, what it doesn't do, what it must do, how it works, and how it hasn't changed. It looks at how the Federal Reserve judges market levels, how and when it decides to intervene, how it judges whether a hot economy will produce inflation or not, and many other decisions it makes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1190592 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Nearly every analysis of our financial times touches on the dramatic events of October, 1998. Fed, Martin Mayer's engaging examination of the much talked about but little understood US Federal Reserve actually leaps off from this extraordinary date, a month in which the market closed "lock limit down" for the first time in almost a decade and the Fed's Chairman Alan Greenspan began what would turn into a radical reinvention of his agency's role and its influence on the market. Indeed, while most of the rest of the world's countries were diminishing the role of their central banks, Congress was granting new powers and responsibilities to the Fed. Mayer's book--part history, part journalistic report, and all detailed analysis--looks at the significance of those powers, their benefits and risks, and what they mean to the markets. He also devotes a number of chapters to the day-to-day inner workings of the Federal Reserve, its influence in international financial matters, and its possible future role in the upcoming years.

As a prolific author and respected scholar of economics, Mayer has been immersed in the financial world for decades and is able to provide both a bird's-eye and long-range view of the complicated manoeuvrings of money. Without his excellent story-telling abilities and fluid writing style, this book would be very heavy going for anyone who doesn't speak the language of high finance. Though it is most definitely dense (and its structure somewhat erratic), Mayer does manage to make a complicated subject accessible for those with more interest than actual knowledge. An informative look at a hitherto enigmatic but influential institution. --S Ketchum

Review
Robert Litan Vice President and Director, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution The extraordinary performance of the U.S. economy in the 1990s is due, in no small measure, to the superb monetary management by the Federal Reserve Board. There is no one better qualified to take readers behind the scenes to understand how the Fed really operates than Martin Mayer, whose matchless prose is equaled by his thorough understanding of how the economy, the banking system, and the Federal Reserve really operate.

About the Author
Martin Mayer is a premier financial journalist with many bestselling books to his credit including THE BANKERS and THE GREATEST-EVER BANK ROBBERY. He is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, regular contributor to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and a popular columnist for OnMoney.com.