In this book, Robert L. Hetzel draws on more than forty years of experience as an economist in the central bank to trace the influences of the Fed on the American economy. Comparing periods in which the Fed stabilized the economy to those when it did the opposite, Hetzel tells the story of a...

Why did Europe create the European Central Bank in the image of the Bundesbank? More generally, what accounts for the current consensus over how a central bank should conduct monetary policy? Germany's experience of hyperinflation and deflation illustrate the West's disastrous experiments in...

To understand the origin of the modern central bank — its institutional structure and monetary policy — one must understand the history of the Bundesbank. The narrative history offered here examines the evolution of that institution, from the start and the collapse of the Bretton Woods...