The making of US monetary policy: Central bank transparency and the neoliberal dilemma

Abstract

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve's shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking.

Liberalisation and the Political Economy of Financial Bubbles

“…9 Interestingly, the growing popularisation of finance has somewhat inverted the classical theme of financial responsibility, with the crises being increasingly pegged on the financial elites and their manipulations rather than the irrationality of the masses. In the US, the question of regulation is played out increasingly in terms of transparency rather than restrictions (Krippner 2007). 10 They have also, in turn, put a high premium on the ability of financial actors to gage the market.…”

Speaking to the people? Money, trust, and central bank legitimacy in the age of quantitative easing

“…The literature on central bank transparency and monetary trust has come to terms with the problem of the "great divide" that separates central bankers and their lay audiences (Haldane 2016 (Braun 2015;Holmes 2014;Krippner 2007;Nelson/Katzenstein 2014). While the former reduce monetary trust to a yes/no answer, ignoring actual collective beliefs about money, the latter focus overwhelmingly on central bankers' attempts to manage the expectations of a very small elite of financial and business professionals, thus remaining within the confines of "methodological elitism" (Stanley/Jackson 2016).…”

“…Hinting in a similar direction, the chief economist of the Bank of England has coined the phrase of a "great divide" to capture the -increasingly worrisome, from his point of view -phenomenon of a "perception gap between the financial sector and wider society" (Haldane 2016). The literature on central bank communication has largely ignored this divide -including in political economy, sociology, and anthropology (Braun 2015;Holmes 2014;Krippner 2007;Nelson/Katzenstein 2014). This literature has focused on the communicative interaction between central bankers and a select group of financial and business elites, thus reproducing the "methodological elitism" (Stanley/Jackson 2016) of rational expectations macroeconomics (however, see Velthuis 2015).…”

Le pouvoir des mots : émission et réception du discours du banquier central

“…Un consensus a émergé, d'abord sur le plan théorique, puis pratique, considérant que l'information détenue par la Banque centrale devait être largement diffusée, de manière à ancrer et guider les anticipations des acteurs économiques. Sur le versant sociologique, les travaux de Krippner (2007), Aitken (2007), Hall (2008), Brasset et Clarke (2012), Clarke et Roberts (2014) ou Velthuis (2015) ont souligné les inflexions du « bank talk » (Karl, 2013). Le travail récent de Holmes (Economy of words, 2014), tente la conciliation et conjugue l'argumentaire sociologique et économique pour étudier les transformations dans la rhétorique utilisée par les instituts d'émission.…”