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What were they thinking? The Federal Reserve in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis

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  • Stephen Golub
  • Ayse Kaya
  • Michael Reay

Abstract

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is responsible for monitoring, analyzing and ultimately stabilizing US financial markets. It also has unrivalled access to economic data, high-level connections to financial institutions, and a large staff of professionally trained economists. Why then was it apparently unconcerned by the financial developments that are now widely recognized to have caused the 2008 financial crisis? Using a wide range of Fed documents from the pre-crisis period, particularly the transcripts of meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), this paper shows that Fed policymakers and staff were aware of relevant developments in financial markets, but paid infrequent attention to them and disregarded significant systemic threats. Drawing on literatures in economics, political science and sociology, the paper then demonstrates that the Fed's intellectual paradigm in the years before the crisis focused on 'post hoc interventionism' - the institution's ability to limit the fallout should a systemic disturbance arise. Further, the paper argues that institutional routines played a crucial role in maintaining this paradigm and in contributing to the Fed's inadequate attention to the warning signals in the pre-crisis period.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Golub & Ayse Kaya & Michael Reay, 2015. "What were they thinking? The Federal Reserve in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 657-692, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:4:p:657-692
    DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.932829
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gorton, Gary B., 2012. "Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don't See Them Coming," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199922901.
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    4. Jeffrey M. Chwieroth, 2010. "Capital Ideas: The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9087.
    5. Ellen Meade, 2006. "Dissent and Disagreement on the Fed's FOMC: Understanding Regional Affiliations and limits to Transparency," DNB Working Papers 094, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    6. Axilrod, Stephen H., 2011. "Inside the Fed: Monetary Policy and Its Management, Martin through Greenspan to Bernanke," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262015625, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hasan Dinçer & Serhat Yüksel & Seçil Şenel, 2018. "Analyzing the Global Risks for the Financial Crisis after the Great Depression Using Comparative Hybrid Hesitant Fuzzy Decision-Making Models: Policy Recommendations for Sustainable Economic Growth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-15, September.
    2. Tim Marple, 2021. "The social management of complex uncertainty: Central Bank similarity and crisis liquidity swaps at the Federal Reserve," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 377-401, April.
    3. Johnson, Juliet & Arel-Bundock, Vincent & Portniaguine, Vladislav, 2018. "Adding rooms onto a house we love: Central banking after the Global Financial Crisis," SocArXiv bms5n, Center for Open Science.
    4. Diessner, Sebastian & Lisi, Giulio, 2019. "Masters of the ‘masters of the universe’? Monetary, fiscal and financial dominance in the Eurozone," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100754, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Taner Akan & Aycan Hepsağ & Şeref Bozoklu, 2022. "Explaining U.S. economic growth performance by macroeconomic governance, 1952–2018," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(5), pages 1437-1465, November.
    6. Goutsmedt, Aurélien & Sergi, Francesco & Claveau, François & Fontan, Clément, 2023. "The Different Paths of Central Bank Scientization: The Case of the Bank of England," SocArXiv jzwdt, Center for Open Science.

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