Fed Power: How Finance Wins, Edition 2

Lawrence Jacobs · Desmond King

Feb 2021 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

An eye-opening analysis of the Federal Reserve's massive and unwarranted power in American life and how it favors the financial sector over everyone else. The Federal Reserve, created more than a century ago, is the most powerful central bank in the world. The Fed's power, which derives from its ability to alter the money supply and move interest rates, weighs heavily not only on the US economy, but on the world economy as well. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Desmond King's Fed Power is the first sustained synthesis of the Fed's political role--especially the way in which it uses its power to benefit some interest groups and not others--since the 2008 financial crisis. In this fully updated and revised second edition, Fed Power addresses new developments during Trump's presidency--particularly the Fed's massive and unprecedented injection of liquidity into the US economy following the COVID epidemic-and offers fresh insights on the Fed's outsized role in picking winners and losers in the American economy. King and Jacobs conclude with bold proposals to reform America's financial management to prevent future crises and to restore democratic accountability. A powerful critique of how the Federal Reserve governs the American economy, Fed Power will be essential reading for anyone interested in the role that the Fed's policies have played in increasing economic and racial inequality across both the Obama and Trump presidencies and the new directions pursued by the Biden administration and progressive activists.

About the author

Lawrence R. Jacobs is Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies at the Humphrey School for Public Affairs, the University of Minnesota, and co-author of both Health Care Reform and American Politics (Oxford) and Class War? (Chicago). Desmond King is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at Oxford University and author of Making Americans (Harvard), as well as co-author of Still a House Divided (Princeton).