Inside the Fed: Monetary Policy and Its Management, Martin through Greenspan to Bernanke: Stephen H. Axilrod

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Axilrod, a longtime Federal Reserve System veteran, provides an insider’s perspective on how the Fed has evolved over the past 50 years. Revealing the impact of personalities and their responses to political, social and bureaucratic situations, he explores such key topics such as money supply vs. interest rates, monetary base and reserve aggregates vs. money-market conditions, and increased emphasis on real-world variables rather than on monetary variables as indicators and guides for policy. The book is based mostly on anecdotal recollections of personal interactions with central bank leaders and others as they managed policy discussions and implementation. Despite the involvement of other influential parties, Axilrod’s view is that chairmen took the lead in policy formation but had limited influence on the day-to-day operating targets. He also offers his thoughts on the future of the organization, noting that leaders will need to take a more direct account of international markets in making judgments about policy and its management. Informative and insightful, this view of the inner workings of the Fed will appeal to anyone with an interest in economics or curious about the organization’s recent progression. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“An intimate account of the Fed’s depressing decline in the Seventies and dramatic comeback in the Volcker years when the central bank triumphed over the biggest threat to the U.S. economy since the Great Depression. Now that the old enemy, stagflation, is stirring once more, the lessons Stephen Axilrod draws from past battles couldn’t be timelier.” - Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind “No one seriously interested in American monetary policy in the post-World War II era can ignore what Axilrod recounts here.” - Benjamin M. Friedman, William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University”

"An intimate account of the Fed’s depressing decline in the seventies and dramatic comeback in the Volcker years when the central bank triumphed over the biggest threat to the U.S. economy since the Great Depression. Now that the old enemy, stagflation, is stirring once more, the lessons Stephen Axilrod draws from past battles couldn’t be timelier."
—Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

"Informative and insightful, this view of the inner workings of the Fed will appeal to anyone with an interest in economics of curious about the organization’s recent progression."
— Publishers Weekly

"Stephen Axilrod’s aptly titled book is, indeed, the ultimate Federal Reserve insider’s account. Leaving aside only the chairmen under whom he served, no one played a greater role in shaping U.S. monetary policy during these turbulent years or had a closer view of how the policy was made. And, true to the author, Axilrod’s book is full of plain common sense about central banking, economic policy, and much beyond. No one seriously interested in American monetary policy in the post-World War II era can ignore what Axilrod recounts here."
—Benjamin M. Friedman, William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University

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Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (Yale Agrarian Studies.): Deborah Fitzgerald

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
During the early decades of the twentieth century, agricultural practice in America was transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial activity. In this book Deborah Fitzgerald argues that farms became modernized in the 1920s because they adopted not only new machinery but also the financial, cultural, and ideological apparatus of industrialism. Fitzgerald examines how bankers and emerging professionals in engineering and economics pushed for systematic, businesslike farming. She discusses how factory practices served as a template for the creation across the country of industrial or corporate farms. She looks at how farming was affected by this revolution and concludes by following several agricultural enthusiasts to the Soviet Union, where the lessons of industrial farming were studied.

From the Publisher
Yale Series in Agrarian Studies

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Profit with Honor: The New Stage of Market Capitalism (The Future of American Democracy Series): Daniel Yankelovich

• Filed under: Recommended

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Social scientist Yankelovich (Uniting America) is a policy-minded pollster who has served on the boards such companies as CBS, ETS and US West. Here he takes stock of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia and other alleged bilkers, arguing that such companies are not just bad apples on a sound branch: the increasing permissiveness and deregulation of the business world, he argues, coupled with the stock market’s increased emphasis on short-term shareholder value, has instigated a climate of unenlightened, all-consuming self-interest. Americans are thus faced with a stark choice between a free market or a civil society, but each vision is “radically incomplete.” Arguing that the current climate for business is both harmful and unlikely to be legislated away, he proposes a new set of cultural norms dubbed “stewardship ethics”-social responsibility, but without the usual self-righteous disdain for money associated with non-profits. Yaneklovich’s guidelines evoke the usual business utopia, where employees and consumers alike return to trust in the corporations, but his slim volume is more visionary than practical, leaving interested parties largely on their own when it comes to implementing his ideas on stewardship.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Yankelovich, a social scientist, researcher, and 30-year veteran of many corporate boards and trusteeships, brings his unique perspective to the challenging topic of ethics in corporate America. Recent corporate scandals can be traced to consequences of deregulation, linking of executives’ incentive compensation to the company’s stock price, and the acceptability of executives winning for their own gain at everyone else’s expense. Although not a new concept, Yankelovich’s stewardship ethics designates profit taking as a top corporate priority along with care of employees, customers, the community, and society at large. Yankelovich’s reputation and vast experience in dealing with corporate management gives authority to this road map for developing an ethical culture. He believes ethical renewal “must come company by company, led by individual CEOs who become convinced that stewardship ethics will give them a strategic competitive advantage in the marketplace and who know how to use their boards for the judgment, support^B and validation they need to implement their policies.” Mary Whaley
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