Monetary System and Monetary Policies (II)

People want money because of its purchasing power in terms of the goods it will buy.The quantity of real balances demanded falls as the interest rate rises. On the other hand, when interest-bearing assets are risky, people prefer to hold some of the safe asset, money. When there is no immediate need to make transactions, this leads to a demand for holding interest-bearing time deposits rather than non-interest-bearing sight deposits. The demand for time deposits will be larger with an increase in the total wealth to be invested.

Interest rates are a tool to regulate the market for bonds. Being sold and purchased by the Central Bank, bonds depend on the latter for their supply and price.

Interest rates affect household wealth and consumption. Consumption is believed to depend both on interest rates and taxes. Higher interest rates reduce consumer demand. Temporary tax changes are likely to have less effect on consumer demand than tax changes that are expected to be permanent.

There also exists a close relationship between interest rates and incomes. With a given money supply, higher income must be accompanied by higher interest rates to keep money demand unchanged.

A given income level can be maintained by an easy monetary policy and a tight fiscal policy or by the converse.

Inflation

Inflation is a steady rise in the average price and wage level. The rise m wages being high enough to raise costs of production, prices grow further resulting in a higher rate of inflation and, finally, in an inflationary spiral. Periods when inflation rates are very large are referred to as hyperinflation.

The causes of inflation are rather complicated, and there is a number of theories explaining them. Monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, say that inflation is caused by too rapid increase in money supply and the corresponding excess demand for goods.

Therefore, monetarists consider due government control of money supply to be able to restrict inflation rates. They also believe the high rate of unemployment to be likely to restrain claims for higher wages. People having jobs accept the wages they are being paid, the inflationary spiral being kept under control. This situation also accounts for rather slow increase in aggregate demand.

On the other hand, Keynesians, that is, economists following the theory of John M. Keynes, suppose inflation to be due to processes occurring in money circulation. They say that low inflation and unemployment rates can be ensured by adopting a tight incomes policy.

Incomes policies, though, monetarists argue may temporarily speedup the transition to a lower inflation rate but they are unlikely to succeed in the long run.

The Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 in order to provide elastic money supply, especially during the harvesting seasons, to meet the farmers' demands for short-term loans. The Federal Reserve System was to meet these seasonal demands for money through the reserve balances of commercial banks. To ensure efficient functioning of the Federal Reserve System, the territory of the United States was divided into twelve Federal Reserve districts, each one having a Federal Reserve Bank. Ten of the twelve Reserve Banks have branch offices.

Central coordination is provided by the Board of Governors (Совет управляющих) in Washington, D.C. Thus, the Federal Reserve System is a national system that is well adjusted to local economic conditions. Handling daily transactions with banks in its territory, each Reserve Bank maintains close contacts with the local business community.

Unlike commercial banks, Federal Reserve Banks are not operated for profit. To serve the community is their function. The shares of Federal Reserve Banks are held by member banks.

Each Federal Bank is managed by nine directors, three of which, bankers themselves, represent member banks, three are local businessmen and three, not in any way connected with the banking industry, are appointed by the Board of Governors in Washington.

The board of directors appoints the officers who are given the responsibility for the daily operations of the Reserve Banks.

Members of the Board of Governors are appointed by the US President, which is ratified by the Senate. The Board of Governors has budgetary control over the Reserve Banks, provides annual audit of all of them and their branches. It is also responsible for changes in reserve requirements.