A Century of U.S. Central Banking: Goals, Frameworks, Accountability – Chairman Ben S. Bernanke At the “The First 100 Years of the Federal Reserve: The Policy Record, Lessons Learned, and Prospects for the Future,” a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 2, 2013
“Today, I’ll discuss the evolution over the past 100 years of three key aspects of Federal Reserve policymaking: the goals of policy, the policy framework, and accountability and communication. The changes over time in these three areas provide a useful perspective, I believe, on how the role and functioning of the Federal Reserve have changed since its founding in 1913, as well as some lessons for the present and for the future. I will pay particular attention to several key episodes of the Fed’s history, all of which have been referred to in various contexts with the adjective “Great” attached to them: the Great Experiment of the Federal Reserve’s founding, the Great Depression, the Great Inflation and subsequent disinflation, the Great Moderation, and the recent Great Recession.”
