How Did The Federal Reserve Affect The Economy

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Introduction The banking industry has changed throughout history from its first origins back in to the 1800s. It wasn’t until the early 1900s when the system we know today started the establishment of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve enabled the banking industry to become prominent and longstanding with regulations, requirements and laws banks need to follow. The Federal Reserve has many roles and upholds its responsibilities throughout the toughest of times. Booms and busts in the economy are inevitable. It is a constant cycle of change but what matters is to the extent of the boom or bust. Since the early 1900s, the United States went through two of the worst recessions in history, the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis. Both of the crises played a major role on the banks and other financial industries within the industry. After the Great Depression, three of the most influential…show more content…
When the central bank wants to stimulate growth, it will enact a low-rate police and when it wants to contain inflations, it will maintain higher rates. This approach ran the Federal Reserve into a problem because it had effectively cut rates to zero which meant that it no longer had the ability to stimulate growth through its interest rate policy. This forced the Federal Reserve to look to quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is used to increase the money supply by buying government securities from the market. It increases the money supply by flooding institutions with capital to promote lending and liquidity. In light of the 2008 financial crisis, high unemployment and slow growth forced the Federal Reserve to stimulate its policy through quantitative easing. The program initially called for $700 billion but had little impact. The program then expanded to $1.25
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