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Working Paper
Monetary Policy 101: A Primer on the Fed's Changing Approach to Policy Implementation
The Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy in order to achieve its statutory mandate of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates as prescribed by the Congress and laid out in the Federal Reserve Act. For many years prior to the financial crisis, the FOMC set a target for the federal funds rate and achieved that target through purchases and sales of securities in the open market. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, with a superabundant level of reserve balances in the banking system having been created as a result of the Federal Reserve's large scale ...
Working Paper
How Does the Fed Adjust its Securities Holdings and Who is Affected?
The Federal Open Market Committee indicated in its September 2017 post-meeting statement that it will initiate in October a balance sheet normalization program to gradually reduce its securities holdings. This action will put in place a policy of reinvesting and redeeming portions of the principal payments received by the Federal Reserve from its holdings of Treasury and agency securities. How are these adjustments to the Federal Reserve?s securities holdings transacted and who is affected? This paper provides a primer regarding how the Federal Reserve accounts for these securities ...
Discussion Paper
How Have the Fed's Three Rate Hikes Passed Through to Selected Short-term Interest Rates?
Since December 2015, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has increased the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points three times, bringing the target range from 0 to 25 basis points in late 2015 to 75 to 100 basis points in March 2017. This Note examines how this cumulative 75 basis point increase in the target range for the Fed's policy rate has transmitted to other short-term interest rates.
Discussion Paper
The Federal Reserve's New Approach to Raising Interest Rates
At its December 2015 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)--the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee--raised its target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, marking the end of an extraordinary seven-year period during which the federal funds target range was held near zero to support the recovery of the U.S. economy from the worst financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression.
Discussion Paper
Implementing Monetary Policy in an "Ample-Reserves" Regime: When in Crisis (Note 3 of 3)
Note 1 and Note 2 in this three-part series described how the Federal Reserve (or Fed) implements monetary policy in normal times, with an ample quantity of reserves in the banking system. In this third and final Note in our series, we take a detour in light of current circumstances and describe how the Fed operates amid a crisis—when facing severely strained economic or financial circumstances, or both.