伯南克第一課英文講義

1、伯南克第一課英文講義 北京時間3月21日凌晨，美聯(lián)儲主席伯南克稍早時在喬治-華盛頓大學商學院進行了針對該院學生系列講座的第一講，題目為：美聯(lián)儲的基本使命。以下是伯南克本次講座的英文講義全文。(資料來源于美聯(lián)儲網(wǎng)站)The Federal Reserve and the Financial CrisisOrigins and Mission of the Federal Reserve, Lecture 1George Washington University School of BusinessMarch 20, 2012, 12:45 p.m。ApplausePresident Steve

2、 Knapp: Well, good afternoon. I think the students here may know who I am but for those who are watching the broadcast, Im Steve Knapp, President of George Washington University. And its really a pleasure to welcome you to todays first class in the series entitled Reflections on the Federal Reserve

3、and its place in todays economy, featuring the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Dr. Ben Bernanke. Im pleased to acknowledge that we have with us two of the universitys trustees, Nelson Carbonell and Mark Shenkman, and also a number of faculty members are here in the audience and some of them will be

4、 teaching later in the series. Today is the first university lecture series delivered by a sitting Chairman of the Federal Reserve. I think it does provide an extraordinary opportunity for the students who are here in the classroom, but also for those watching online. They have an opportunity to gai

5、n insight into the nations central banking system and a wide range of issues that affect this country and the world. I do want to say that there are microphones available for the students, and certainly encourage you when the Chairmans lecture is over to avail yourself of those and we hope therell b

6、e a lively exchange of questions and answers at the end of the lecture. Its now a distinct honor to introduce the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Dr. Ben Bernanke. Dr. Bernanke took office in 2006, and is now serving a second term as Chairman. He also serves as Chai

7、rman of the Federal Reserves Open Market Committee. Before his appointment as Chairman, Dr. Bernanke was involved with the Federal Reserve in several roles as a Member of the Board of Governors, as a visiting scholar, and as a member of the Academic Advisory Panel at the Federal Reserve Bank of New

8、York. He also served as Chairman of the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers from June 2005 to January 2006.Now Chairman Bernanke is no stranger to academia. Hes been a faculty member at Princeton, Stanford and New York University, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hes held a

9、Guggenheim and a Sloan Fellowship, and is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chairman Bernanke received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and a PhD from MIT. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Dr

10、. Ben Bernanke. Applause Chairman Ben Bernanke: Thank you very much, President Knapp. Gee, this is great. This is what I used to do before I got in this line of work for 23 years and Ive always enjoyed engaging with college students. So thank you for being here, and I hope we do have a good conversa

11、tion. Let me particularly thank President Knapp and Professor Fort and George Washington University. As everybody here knows, these lectures are part of a real course and after I get off the scene there will be other professors talking about other aspects of the Fed and youll hear different points o

12、f view which is great. And youll have to do some papers and all those kinds of things and Im going to read a few of the paper. So, I look forward to doing that.So, Ill be talking from slides, which is in part for the purpose of making this available to others who might be interested. These slides wi

13、ll be posted on the Federal Reserves website, , as we go through. And so, if you need extra copies, by all means do that. And as President Knapp said, Im going to be talking for a while from the presentation but at the end, I hope we can have some questions and answers.So, let me g

14、et started. So what I want to talk about in these four lectures is the Federal Reserve and the financial crisis. Now, my thinking about this is very much conditioned by my experience as an economic historian. I think when you talk about the issues that just occurred of the last few years, it makes t

15、he most sense to think about it in the broader context of central banking as its taking place over the centuries. So, even though were going to be focusing a good bit of the lectures, particularly next week, on the financial crisis and how the Fed responded. I think we need to go back and look at th

16、e broader context. So, as we talk about the Fed well be talking about the origin and mission of central banks in general, and were looking at previous financial crises, most notably the Great Depression, and see how that informed the Feds actions and decisions in the recent crisis. So let me just gi

17、ve you a roadmap of the four lectures. Today, lecture one, we wont touch on the current crisis at all. Instead, well talk about what central banks are, what they do, how central banking got started in the United States and well do some history. Well talk about how the Fed engaged with its first grea

18、t challenge, the Great Depression of the 1930s. The second lecture on Thursday, well take up the history. Well review developments in central banking and with the Federal Reserve after World War II talking about the conquest of inflation, the great moderation and other developments that occurred aft

19、er World War II. But well spend a good bit of time lecture two, in lecture two, talking about the build-up to the crisis and some of the factors that led to the crisis of 2008, 2009.Then next week, well get into the more recent events. In lecture three, well talk about the intense phase of the finan

20、cial crisis, its causes, its implications, and particularly, the response to the crisis by the Federal Reserve and by other policymakers. And then, in the final lecture, lecture four, well look at the aftermath. Well talk about the recession that followed the crisis, the policy response of the Fed i

21、ncluding monetary policy, the broader response in terms of the changes in financial regulation, and a little bit of forward-looking discussion about how this experience will change how central banks operate and how the Federal Reserve will operate going forward. So this is our topic today is origins

22、 and missions of the Federal Reserve. So lets talk in general about what a central bank is. If youve had some background in economics you know that a central bank is not a regular bank, its a government agency, and it stands at the center of the monetary and financial system of a country. Central ba

23、nks are very important institutions, they have helped to guide the development of modern financial systems, modern monetary systems and they play a major role in economic policy. Now, weve had various arrangements over the years but today, virtually, all countries have central banks. The Federal Res

24、erve in the United States, the Bank of Japan in Japan, Bank of Canada, and so on. The main exception is only cases where you have whats called a currency union where a number of countries collectively share a central bank. The most important example by far of that is the European Central Bank which

25、is central bank to 17 European countries who share the common currency, the Euro. But even in that case, each of the participating countries does have its own central bank which is part of the overall system of the Euro. So central banks are now ubiquitous, even the smallest countries typically have

26、 central banks. Now, this is a very important theme here, what do Central Banks do? What is their mission? And as Ill discuss throughout the lectures, its convenient to talk about two broad aspects of what central banks do. The first is to try to achieve macroeconomic stability. And by that, I gener

27、ally mean stable growth in the economy, avoiding big swings, recessions and the like, and keeping inflation low and stable. So thats the economic function of a central bank. The other function of central banks, which is going to get a lot of attention, obviously, in these lectures, is the financial

28、stability function. Central banks try to keep the financial system working normally and in particular, they either, they try to prevent or if unsuccessful in preventing they try to mitigate financial panics or financial crises. And Ill talk more about what those are. Now what are the tools that cent

29、ral banks use to achieve these two broad objectives? Very, in very simple terms, there are basically two broad sets of tools. On the economic stability side, the main tool as Im sure everyone knows is monetary policy. In normal times, the Fed, for example, can raise or lower short-term interest rate

30、s. It does that by buying and selling securities in the open market. And again, in normal times, if the economy is growing too slowly or inflation is falling too low, the Fed can stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates. Lower interest rates feed through to a broad range of other interest ra

31、tes that encourages spending, acquisition of homes for example, construction, investment by firms, borrowing. It just generates more demand, more spending and more investment in the economy, and that creates more thrust in growth so that to stimulate an economy, you lower interest rates. And similar

32、ly, if the economy is growing too hot, if inflation is becoming a problem, then the normal tool of central bank is to raise interest rates. So by raising the overnight interest rate, known in the United States as the federal funds rate, higher interest rates feed through the system and help to slow

33、the economy by raising the cost of borrowing, of buying a house, of buying a car, or of investing in capital goods and that will slow the economy and reduce pressure of overheating. So, monetary policy is the basic tool that central banks have used for many, many years to try to keep the economy at

34、a more or less even keel in terms of both growth and inflation.Now, a little less familiar is the main tool of central banks in dealing with financial panics or financial crises. And that tool is the provision of liquidity. So to address financial stability concerns and for reasons Ill explain, one

35、thing that central banks can do is make short-term loans to financial institutions. As Ill explain, providing short-term credit to financial institutions during a period of panic or crisis can help calm the market, can help stabilize those institutions and can help mitigate or bring to an end a fina

36、ncial crisis. So this activity which is an old one, as Ill discuss, is known as the lender of last resort tool. So again, if financial markets are disrupted, financial institutions dont have alternative sources of funding, then the central bank stands ready to service the lender of last resort provi

37、ding liquidity to the system and thereby helping to stabilize the financial system.Now, theres a third tool which the Fed has had from the beginning and most central banks have which is financial regulation and supervision. Central banks usually play a role in supervising the banking system, assessi

38、ng the extent of risk on their portfolios, making sure their practices are sound, and in that way, trying to keep the financial system healthy. To the extent that financial system can be kept healthy and its risk-taking within reasonable bounds, then the chance of a financial crisis occurring in the

39、 first place is reduced. However, this activity, and I will come back to it, this is something which is not unique to central banks. In the United States, for example, there are a number of different agencies, like the FDIC or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that work with the Fed in s

40、upervising the financial system. So this is not unique to central banks and so Ill be down playing this for the time being and focusing on the two principle tools, monetary policy and lender of last resort activities.Now, where do central banks come from? One thing people dont appreciate, I think, i

41、s that central banking is not a new development. Its been around for a very long time. The Swedes set up a central bank in 1668, three and a half centuries ago. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 and that of course for many decades or if not centuries was the most important and influential cent

42、ral bank in the world, and France in 1800. So, central bank theory and practice is, again, not a new thing. We have been thinking about these issues collectively as an economics profession and in other contexts for many, many years. Now, Ive exaggerated slightly in a sense that, say, the Bank of Eng

43、land in 1694 wasnt set up from scratch, its a full-fledged central bank, it was originally a private institution. And over time, it acquired some of the functions of a central bank such as issuing money or serving as lender of last resort. But over time, these central banks became essentially govern

44、ment agencies, government institutions as they all are today. Certainly, one important responsibility of central banks for much of the period that Im talking about was to manage the gold standard to issue paper money that was backed by gold and Ill talk more about gold in a few moments.Now, the lend

45、er of last resort function, which I mentioned earlier, became important in the- mostly in the 19th century. Early in the 19th century, the Bank of England was doing a lot of this type of activity and they became very good at it. And as well see, while the United States was suffering with banking pan

46、ics in the latter part of the 19th century, banking panics in the United Kingdom were quite rare. So the Bank of England sort of set the pace in some sense. It was the most important central bank and it helped establish the practices and the approaches that we still use today. Now, I need to talk a

47、little bit because its less familiar about what a financial panic is. In general, a financial panic is sparked by a loss of confidence in an institution and I think the best way to explain this is to give a familiar example. How many of you have ever seen the movie Its a Wonderful Life? No? Less peo

48、ple are watching Christmas movies than they used to be, I guess laughter. Well, one of the problems that Jimmy Stewart runs into as a banker in “Its a Wonderful Life” is a threatened run on his institution. And what is a run? Well, lets imagine a situation like Jimmy Stewarts situation before there

49、was any deposit insurance, no FDIC. And imagine you have a bank on the corner, just a regular commercial bank, the first bank of Washington, D.C., and this bank makes loans to businesses and the like, and it finances itself by taking deposits from the public and deposits are demand deposits, which m

50、eans that anybody can pull out their money anytime they want which is important because people use deposits for ordinary activities, like shopping.Now imagine what would happen if for some reason, a rumor goes around that this bank has made some bad loans and is losing money. As a depositor, you say

51、 to yourself, Well, I dont know if this rumor is true or not。” But what I know is if that I wait and everybody else pulls out their money and Im the last person in line, I may end up with nothing. So whats-what are you going to do? Youre going to go to the bank and say, Well, Im not sure if this is

52、a true rumor or not, but knowing that everybody else is going to come to the bank, Im going to pull my money out. And so, depositors line up, they pull out their cash, no bank holds cash equal to all their deposits, they put that cash into loans. So the only way the bank can pay off the depositors,

53、once it gets through its minimal cash reserves, is to sell or otherwise dispose of its loans. But its very hard to sell a commercial loan, it takes time, you get-you have to sell it at a discount. And by the time youve gotten around to doing that, depositors are at your door and saying, Where is my

54、money? And so ultimately, a panic can lead the bank to close and be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The bank will fail, it will have to sell off its assets at a discount price and ultimately, many depositors might lose money as happened in the Great Depression, for example. So a bank panic is a problem

55、which is faced by any institution where it has loans or other illiquid-type assets and it finances itself by short-term deposits or other short-term lending. Now, panics can be a serious problem. Obviously, if one bank is having problems, people-the bank next door might begin to worry about problems

56、 in their bank. And so, a bank run can lead to widespread bank runs or a banking panic, more broadly. Sometimes, banks again, pre-FDIC, banks would respond to a panic or a run by refusing to pay out deposits and they would just say, No more, were closing the window. So that restriction on the access

57、 of the depositors to their money was another bad outcome and caused problems for people who had to make a payroll or had to buy their groceries. Many banks would fail and beyond that, banking panics often spread into other markets, were often associated with stock market crashes for example. And al

58、l those things together, as you might expect, were bad for the economy. And so, a banking panic could lead to a crash in the economy as well.So heres a formal definition just for your reference unless you see people around, standing around in the corner waiting to take out their money, but a financi

59、al panic is-can occur anytime you have an institution that has longer term illiquid assets, so think of a bank that has loans that are long-term loans that are illiquid in the sense that it takes time and effort to sell those loans and which are financed on the other side of the balance sheet by short-term liabilities like deposits but could be other things for short-term liabilities. Anytime you