Fiscal Fed

Descripción

A revelatory history of how the Federal Reserve finances American power. Central banks, we are told, are economic superpowers that must remain independent of modern democratic governments. The US Federal Reserves presumed insulation from politics affords it autonomy and credibility to control inflation and promote economic stabilityor so the story goes. In The Fiscal Fed, Will Bateman offers a deeply sourced, empirical history that shows the Feds primary function is actually, and has always been, fiscalsustaining the market for Treasury borrowing that makes up the difference between federal spending and federal revenue. Bateman combs Fed meeting transcripts, staff notes, financial accounts, and legal documents to trace loans and public-debt purchases since the central banks founding. The result is a milestone work that reveals how, for most of the Feds history, its transactions were aimed at government financingeither by providing cheap credit to close budget gaps or by manipulating yields on government debt. The Feds support for government finance is a feature, not a bug, of American economic institutions.