Books

The Federal Reserve is the single most important economic policy institution in the United States. Its recent unprecedented actions and interventions have raised serious concerns in many quarters about inflation, as well as the independence and effectiveness of the Fed. In The Road Ahead for the Fed, a group of expert contributors examine the recent actions of the Federal Reserve and discuss how the Fed arrived at this position, how it can best deal with the road ahead, and how it might reduce the likelihood of crisis-driven interventions in the future.

This an excellent book. The faculty of New York University’s Stern School has provided a broad and deep overview of the crisis and made suggestions for how to minimize the chances of a recurrence going forward...Given the view that the basic cause of the crisis was a credit boom that drove a housing bubble, an important question to ask is why did the Federal Reserve do so little to prevent it. The book endorses this criticism. More importantly, it gives very interesting suggestions for trying to limit systemic risk.