The Pressures on American Monetary Policy

This book provides pathbreaking statistical evidence on when the Administration tried to influence monetary policy and when the Federal Reserve did and did not respond. This revised edition provides the first statistical evidence on why the Federal Reserve behaved the way it did. Included in the book is the SAFER data series (Signalling from the Administration to the Federal Reserve) for the entire 1992--1994 period. Expanded data sets on the effect of Congressional and private pressures on monetary policy will be of interest to market participants and scholars who would use these sources to predict movements in short-term interest rates. This new edition includes recent evidence on the causes and effects of Presidential appointments to the Federal Reserve helping to predict the monetary policy voting behavior of prospective Federal Reserve Board appointees. The book closes by developing an innovative plan to restructure the Federal Reserve that would be mutually acceptable to politicians and central bankers, while simultaneously improving inflation performance