Question

What tool is the most appropriate among the different monetary policy tools available today?

Answer 1

The goals of monetary policy are to promote maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. By implementing effective monetary policy, the Fed can maintain stable prices, thereby supporting conditions for long-term economic growth and maximum employment.

The Federal Reserve’s three instruments of monetary policy are open market operations, the discount rate and reserve requirements.

Open market operations involve the buying and selling of government securities. The term “open market” means that the Fed doesn’t decide on its own which securities dealers it will do business with on a particular day. Rather, the choice emerges from an “open market” in which the various securities dealers that the Fed does business with – the primary dealers – compete on the basis of price. Open market operations are flexible, and thus, the most frequently used tool of monetary policy.

The discount rate is the interest rate charged by Federal Reserve Banks to depository institutions on short-term loans.

Reserve requirements are the portions of deposits that banks must maintain either in their vaults or on deposit at a Federal Reserve Bank.

The Fed uses open market operations as its primary tool to influence the supply of bank reserves. This tool consists of Federal Reserve purchases and sales of financial instruments, usually securities issued by the U.S. Treasury, Federal agencies and government-sponsored enterprises. Open market operations are carried out by the Domestic Trading Desk of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under direction from the FOMC. The transactions are undertaken with primary dealers.

When the Fed wants to increase reserves, it buys securities and pays for them by making a deposit to the account maintained at the Fed by the primary dealer’s bank. When the Fed wants to reduce reserves, it sells securities and collects from those accounts. Most days, the Fed does not want to increase or decrease reserves permanently, so it usually engages in transactions reversed within several days. By trading securities, the Fed influences the amount of bank reserves, which affects the federal funds rate, or the overnight lending rate at which banks borrow reserves from each other.

The federal funds rate is sensitive to changes in the demand for and supply of reserves in the banking system, and thus provides a good indication of the availability of credit in the economy.