A primary purpose of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was to prevent banking panics by establishing the Federal Reserve System to function as a lender of last resort. Other types of financial crisis require a similar response, however, and the Federal Reserve has repeatedly used its capacity to...

"The Importance of Being Predictable" by John B. Taylor -- "Monetary Policy Under Uncertainty" by Ben S. Bernanke -- "The Importance of Being Predictable" by William Poole

This article was originally presented as a speech at the Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., October 14, 2005.

This study offers a historical review of the monetary policy reform of October 6, 1979, and discusses the influences behind it and its significance. We lay out the record from the start of 1979 through the spring of 1980, relying almost exclusively on contemporaneous sources, including the...