Chairman Ben S. Bernanke
At the "The First 100 Years of the Federal Reserve: The Policy Record, Lessons Learned, and Prospects for the Future," a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts
At the "The First 100 Years of the Federal Reserve: The Policy Record, Lessons Learned, and Prospects for the Future," a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts
"Today, I'll discuss the evolution over the past
100 years of three key aspects of Federal Reserve policymaking: the goals of policy,
the policy framework, and accountability and communication. The changes over
time in these three areas provide a useful perspective, I believe, on how the
role and functioning of the Federal Reserve have changed since its founding in
1913, as well as some lessons for the present and for the future. I will pay
particular attention to several key episodes of the Fed's history, all of which
have been referred to in various contexts with the adjective "Great"
attached to them: the Great Experiment of the Federal Reserve's founding, the
Great Depression, the Great Inflation and subsequent disinflation, the Great
Moderation, and the recent Great Recession."
