Congress, the President, and the Federal Reserve: The Politics of American Monetary Policy-Making. By Irwin L. Morris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 190p. $45.00 cloth, $22.95 paper

Political scientists have been fascinated with the role of the Federal Reserve in making monetary policy. It has long been recognized that the Fed has a tremendous amount of power for a regulatory agency that has so much independence from political bodies. Students of comparative monetary institutions have marveled at the contrast of United States policy to that of the rest of the world, with the exception of Germany's Bundesbank. Yet political scientists and economists continue to try to identify how politics shapes American monetary policy. Irwin Morris's book offers a major corrective to some of the flaws of earlier efforts.