1.1 Module 36: The Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy

Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the previous section, we learned that the Federal Reserve System serves as the central bank of the United States. It has two parts: the Board of Governors, which is part of the U.S. government, and the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned.

Functions of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve’s functions fall into four categories. We touched on these functions of the Federal Reserve in the previous section. We examine them again here, but then turn our full attention to the fourth function, conducting monetary policy.

• 1. PROVIDE FINANCIAL SERVICES The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks provide financial services to depository institutions such as banks and other large institutions, including the U.S. government. The Federal Reserve is sometimes referred to as the “banker’s bank” because it holds reserves, clears checks, provides cash, and transfers funds for commercial banks—all services that banks provide for their customers. The Federal Reserve also acts as the banker and fiscal agent for the federal government. The U.S. Treasury has its checking account with the Federal Reserve, so when the federal government writes a check, it is written on an account at the Fed.
• 2. SUPERVISE AND REGULATE BANKING INSTITUTIONS The Federal Reserve is responsible for ensuring the safety and soundness of the nation’s banking and financial system. The regional Federal Reserve Banks examine and regulate commercial banks in their district. The Board of Governors also engages in regulation and supervision of financial institutions.
• 3. MAINTAIN THE STABILITY OF THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM One of the major reasons the Federal Reserve System was created was to provide the nation with a safe and stable monetary and financial system. As part of this function, Federal Reserve banks provide liquidity to financial institutions to ensure their safety and soundness.
• 4. CONDUCT MONETARY POLICY One of the Federal Reserve’s most important functions is the conduct of monetary policy, which involves the Fed using changes in the quantity of money to alter interest rates, which in turn affect the level of overall spending. The goal of monetary policy is to prevent or address extreme macroeconomic fluctuations in the U.S. economy.

How the Fed Conducts Policy

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the main governing body of the Federal Reserve System, oversees Federal Reserve Banks and helps to implement monetary policy.

AP Photo/Britt K. Leckman, Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve has three main policy tools at its disposal: reserve requirements, the discount rate, and, most importantly for the conduct of monetary policy, open-market operations. These tools give the Fed the ability to adjust the money supply to achieve its policy goals.

The Reserve Requirement

In our discussion of bank runs, we noted that the Fed sets a minimum required reserve ratio, currently equal to 10% for checkable bank deposits. Banks that fail to maintain at least the required reserve ratio on average over a two-week period face penalties.

What does a bank do if it looks as if it has insufficient reserves to meet the Fed’s reserve requirement? Normally, it borrows additional reserves from other banks via the federal funds market, a financial market that allows banks that fall short of the reserve requirement to borrow reserves (usually just overnight) from banks that are holding excess reserves. The interest rate in this market is determined by supply and demand but the supply and demand for bank reserves are both strongly affected by Federal Reserve actions. The federal funds rate, the interest rate at which funds are borrowed and lent in the federal funds market, plays a key role in modern monetary policy.

In order to alter the money supply, the Fed can change reserve requirements. If the Fed reduces the required reserve ratio, banks will lend a larger percentage of their deposits, leading to more loans and an increase in the money supply via the money multiplier. Alternatively, if the Fed increases the required reserve ratio, banks are forced to reduce their lending, leading to a fall in the money supply via the money multiplier.

Under current practice, however, the Fed doesn’t use changes in reserve requirements to actively manage the money supply. The last significant change in reserve requirements was in 1992.

The Discount Rate

Banks in need of reserves can also borrow from the Fed itself via the discount window. The discount rate is the interest rate the Fed charges on those loans. Normally, the discount rate is set 1 percentage point above the federal funds rate in order to discourage banks from turning to the Fed when they are in need of reserves.

In order to alter the money supply, the Fed can change the discount rate. Beginning in the fall of 2007, the Fed reduced the spread between the federal funds rate and the discount rate as part of its response to an ongoing financial crisis. As a result, by the spring of 2008 the discount rate was only 0.25 percentage points above the federal funds rate. And by January 2014 the discount rate was still only 0.68 percentage points above the federal funds rate.

If the Fed reduces the spread between the discount rate and the federal funds rate, the cost to banks of being short of reserves falls; banks respond by increasing their lending, and the money supply increases via the money multiplier. If the Fed increases the spread between the discount rate and the federal funds rate, bank lending falls—and so will the money supply via the money multiplier.

The Fed normally doesn’t use the discount rate to actively manage the money supply. Although, as we mentioned earlier, there was a temporary surge in lending through the discount window from the middle of 2007 through 2008 in response to a financial crisis.

Today, normal monetary policy is conducted almost exclusively using the Fed’s third policy tool: open-market operations.

Open-Market Operations

Like the banks it oversees, the Federal Reserve has assets and liabilities. The Fed’s assets consist of its holdings of debt issued by the U.S. government, mainly short-term U.S. government bonds with a maturity of less than one year, known as U.S. Treasury bills. Remember, the Fed isn’t exactly part of the U.S. government, so U.S. Treasury bills held by the Fed are a liability of the government but an asset of the Fed. The Fed’s liabilities consist of currency in circulation and bank reserves. Figure 36-1 summarizes the normal assets and liabilities of the Fed in the form of a T-account.

The Federal Reserve holds its assets mostly in short-term government bonds called U.S. Treasury bills. Its liabilities are the monetary base—currency in circulation plus bank reserves.

In an open-market operation the Federal Reserve buys or sells U.S. Treasury bills, normally through a transaction with commercial banks—banks that mainly make business loans, as opposed to home loans. The Fed never buys U.S. Treasury bills directly from the federal government. There’s a good reason for this: when a central bank buys government debt directly from the government, it is lending directly to the government—in effect, the central bank is “printing money” to finance the government’s budget deficit. This has historically been a formula for disastrous levels of inflation.

The two panels of Figure 36-2 show the changes in the financial position of both the Fed and commercial banks that result from open-market operations. When the Fed buys U.S. Treasury bills from a commercial bank, it pays by crediting the bank’s reserve account by an amount equal to the value of the Treasury bills. This is shown in panel (a): the Fed buys $100 million of U.S. Treasury bills from commercial banks, increasing the monetary base by $100 million because it increases bank reserves by $100 million.

In panel (a), the Federal Reserve increases the monetary base by purchasing U.S. Treasury bills from private commercial banks in an open-market operation. Here, a $100 million purchase of U.S. Treasury bills by the Federal Reserve is paid for by a $100 million increase in the monetary base. This will ultimately lead to an increase in the money supply via the money multiplier as banks lend out some of these new reserves. In panel (b), the Federal Reserve reduces the monetary base by selling U.S. Treasury bills to private commercial banks in an open-market operation. Here, a $100 million sale of U.S. Treasury bills leads to a $100 million reduction in commercial bank reserves, resulting in a $100 million decrease in the monetary base. This will ultimately lead to a fall in the money supply via the money multiplier as banks reduce their loans in response to a fall in their reserves.

When the Fed sells U.S. Treasury bills to commercial banks, it debits the banks’ accounts, reducing their reserves. This is shown in panel (b), where the Fed sells $100 million of U.S. Treasury bills. Here, bank reserves and the monetary base decrease.

You might wonder where the Fed gets the funds to purchase U.S. Treasury bills from banks. The answer is that it simply creates them with a stroke of the pen or a click of the mouse, crediting the banks’ accounts with extra reserves. (The Fed issues currency to pay for Treasury bills only when banks want the additional reserves in the form of currency.) Remember, the modern dollar is fiat money, which isn’t backed by anything. So the Fed can increase the monetary base at its own discretion.

The Fed buys or sells U.S. Treasury bills in transactions with commercial banks in an effort to influence the money supply and interest rates.

Shutterstock

The change in bank reserves caused by an open-market operation doesn’t directly affect the money supply. Instead, it sets the money multiplier in motion. After the $100 million increase in reserves shown in panel (a), commercial banks would lend out their additional reserves, immediately increasing the money supply by $100 million. Some of those loans would be deposited back into the banking system, increasing reserves again and permitting a further round of loans, and so on, leading to a rise in the money supply. An open-market sale has the reverse effect: bank reserves fall, requiring banks to reduce their loans, leading to a fall in the money supply.

Economists often say, loosely, that the Fed controls the money supply—checkable deposits plus currency in circulation. In fact, it controls only the monetary base—bank reserves plus currency in circulation. But by increasing or reducing the monetary base, the Fed can exert a powerful influence on both the money supply and interest rates, which is the basis of monetary policy.

WHO GETS THE INTEREST ON THE FED’S ASSETS?

As we’ve just learned, the Fed owns a lot of assets—Treasury bills—which it bought from commercial banks in exchange for the monetary base in the form of credits to banks’ reserve accounts. These assets pay interest. Yet the Fed’s liabilities consist mainly of the monetary base, liabilities on which the Fed doesn’t pay interest. So the Fed is, in effect, an institution that has the privilege of borrowing funds at a zero interest rate and lending them out at a positive interest rate. That sounds like a pretty profitable business. Who gets the profits?

You do—or rather, U.S. taxpayers do. The Fed keeps some of the interest it receives to finance its operations but turns most of it over to the U.S. Treasury. For example, in 2012 the Federal Reserve System earned net income of $91.0 billion—largely in interest on its holdings of Treasury bills, of which $88.9 billion was returned to the Treasury.

Consider what happens when a fake $100 bill enters circulation. It has the same economic effect as a real $100 bill printed by the U.S. government. That is, as long as the forgery isn’t caught, the fake bill is, for all practical purposes, part of the monetary base.

Taxpayers profit from interest earned on Fed assets and pay when counterfeit bills enter the money supply, reducing those interest payments.

Shutterstock

Meanwhile, the Fed decides on the size of the monetary base based on economic considerations—in particular, the Fed doesn’t let the monetary base get too large because that can cause inflation. So every fake $100 bill that enters circulation basically means that the Fed prints one less real $100 bill. When the Fed prints a $100 bill legally, however, it gets Treasury bills in return—and the interest on those bills helps pay for the U.S. government’s expenses.

So a counterfeit $100 bill reduces the amount of Treasury bills the Fed can acquire and thereby reduces the interest payments going to the Fed and the U.S. Treasury. In the end, taxpayers bear the real cost of counterfeiting.

Module 36 Review

Check Your Understanding