Recession for a Year?
Thursday, November 20, 2008 9:32Federal Reserve policymakers now expect the U.S. economy to contract for as much as a year, with the risk that the slowdown could persist for even longer, according to minutes from a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on Oct. 28 and 29. They were saying this in Oct.
The Federal Reserve was created by the U.S. Congress in 1913. Before that, the U.S. lacked any formal organization for studying and implementing monetary policy. Consequently markets were often unstable and the public had very little faith in the financial and banking systems (sound familiar?).
The Fed is headed by a government agency in Washington known as the Board of Governors. The board is now led by Chairman Ben Bernanke (below), who took over for Alan Greenspan on February 1, 2006. Greenspan had been chairman since 1987.
