U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

93–893 PDF 2015

S. HRG. 114–5 

FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND 

REFORM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

ON 

EXAMINING THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM 

TO CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC 

MARCH 3, 2015 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs 

( 

Available at: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama, Chairman 

MICHAEL CRAPO, Idaho 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana 

PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania 

MARK KIRK, Illinois 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

TIM SCOTT, South Carolina 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK R. WARNER, Virginia 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

WILLIAM D. DUHNKE III, Staff Director and Counsel 

MARK POWDEN, Democratic Staff Director 

JELENA MCWILLIAMS, Chief Counsel 

DANA WADE, Deputy Staff Director 

JACK DUNN III, Professional Staff Member 

LAURA SWANSON, Democratic Deputy Staff Director 

GRAHAM STEELE, Democratic Chief Counsel 

PHIL RUDD, Democratic Legislative Assistant 

DAWN RATLIFF, Chief Clerk 

TROY CORNELL, Hearing Clerk 

SHELVIN SIMMONS, IT Director 

JIM CROWELL, Editor 

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015 

Page 

Opening statement of Chairman Shelby ................................................................ 1 

Opening statements, comments, or prepared statements of: 

Senator Brown .................................................................................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

John B. Taylor, Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics, Stanford 

University ............................................................................................................. 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 34 

Allan H. Meltzer, The Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political 

Economy, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University ................. 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 36 

Responses to written questions of: 

Chairman Shelby ....................................................................................... 72 

Senator Vitter ............................................................................................ 74 

Paul H. Kupiec, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute ..................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 58 

Responses to written questions of: 

Chairman Shelby ....................................................................................... 75 

Senator Vitter ............................................................................................ 79 

Senator Heller ........................................................................................... 80 

Peter Conti-Brown, Academic Fellow, Stanford Law School, Rock Center for 

Corporate Governance ......................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 66 

Chairman Shelby ....................................................................................... 83 

Senator Vitter ............................................................................................ 86 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUPPLIED FOR THE RECORD

Chart of the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances submitted by 

Senator Brown ...................................................................................................... 88 

Testimony of Ron Paul, Chairman, Campaign for Liberty .................................. 89 

(III)

(1) 

FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND 

REFORM 

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2015 

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met at 2:35 p.m., in room SD–538, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard C. Shelby, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN RICHARD C. SHELBY 

Chairman SHELBY. The Committee will come to order. We have 

had a vote. That is the reason we are not exactly on time, so we 

will get started. 

Last week, the Committee began examining potential reforms to 

the Federal Reserve System. We heard the views of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on this topic right here. Today we will 

further explore options to improve the oversight and structure of 

the Fed. 

Many of the Fed’s actions since the financial crisis have emphasized the need for greater accountability. The Fed has undertaken 

three rounds of quantitative easing and grown its balance sheet to 

a staggering $4.5 trillion. 

Although the Fed has concluded new bond purchases, it has not 

yet begun to unwind its balance sheet. It has also kept its target 

interest rate close to 0 percent for more than 6 years. 

After these unprecedented actions, how will the Fed measure its 

impact on the economy? It is not entirely clear. Considering the extent of the monetary stimulus and the risk involved, the Fed 

should be prepared to explain this. And what indicators will the 

Fed use to determine the appropriate time to unwind its balance 

sheet? Again, it is not clear. The Fed should not only be able to answer these questions; it should be held accountable for its actions. 

Federal Reserve officials have stressed the importance of the 

Fed’s independence, but such independence does not mean that it 

is immune from congressional oversight. After all, Congress wrote 

the statute that created the Fed and sets forth its policy objectives. 

Last week, Chair Yellen testified before this Committee that she 

believes the current structure of the Federal Reserve System is 

working well. The current structure, however, has allowed the Fed 

to expand its reach in many ways. 

The Fed’s jurisdiction now covers almost every aspect of the financial system. Much of the expansion in its authority has been 

centralized in Washington, DC, and New York. The Fed now has 

2 

extensive new rulemaking power which gives it the ability to regulate entities it did not before the crisis. Dodd-Frank greatly expanded the regulatory reach of the Federal Reserve. It did not, 

however, examine whether it was correctly structured to account 

for these new and expansive powers. 

Therefore, the Committee will be examining the appropriateness 

of the Fed’s current structure in a post- Dodd-Frank world. As part 

of this effort, we will review proposals aimed at providing greater 

clarity in Fed decision making and reforming the composition of 

the Federal Reserve System. I have asked for the input of the Federal Reserve Banks and welcome their feedback in the coming 

weeks. 

Today I look forward to hearing from the witnesses on proposals 

to reform or to restructure the Fed. We have a very distinguished 

panel of experts before us, and I thank them for being here today. 

The U.S. Congress created the Federal Reserve System to perform a specific set of functions. And while the Fed is an important 

institution, it is not beyond the reach of congressional oversight. I 

believe it is entirely appropriate that Congress periodically review 

the Fed’s structure and its authorities. If we believe changes are 

necessary, changes should be made. But first we should examine 

all of this. 

Senator Brown. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR SHERROD BROWN 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for doing 

this hearing today. 

I would like to, first of all, welcome Mr. Kupiec and Mr. Meltzer 

back. They both testifies at a Subcommittee hearing that Senator 

Toomey and I did a couple of years ago. Welcome back. 

The Federal Reserve System was designed, as we know, to be accountable to Congress and to the American people, while maintaining the central bank’s independence, all important functions. The 

Chair of the Fed is appointed by the President and confirmed, as 

are the other six Governors, and the Chair is required to testify before Congress twice a year, as she did last week to this Committee. 

Over time, the Fed has become more accountable to the public. 

The Fed’s operations are the most transparent they have ever been 

in its history. Various Government agencies and an outside auditing firm regularly review and audit the Fed’s activities and financial statements, with important exceptions. After the crisis, as we 

know, the Fed began to issue regular reports to Congress on its 

lending programs. In December 2010, the Fed released loan details 

for each emergency program created during the crisis. It publicly 

releases records on its discount window loans and open market operations with a 2-year lag. 

As a result of Wall Street reform, the GAO audited the Fed’s 

emergency facilities and governance. The Fed Open Market Committee holds press conferences four times a year—half of its meetings, if you will—to present its current economic projections and 

provide context for its monetary policy decisions. I continue to have 

concerns about the slow pace of the recovery for most Americans. 

FOMC’s monetary policy, I would argue, has allowed—factually has 

allowed for sustained economic growth. 

3 

Some pundits and politicians have been critical of these steps, 

predicting runaway inflation for years. They have been decidedly 

wrong. But our economy continues to gain jobs, and prices have remained stable. 

Under the guise of additional transparency and accountability, 

some are proposing to second-guess the decisions of an independent 

central bank. The Fed certainly looms larger in the economy than 

it has in the past, but the Fed’s extraordinary measures were the 

result of extraordinary excesses in our economy. And changing 

course to pursue only one part of the Fed’s mandate harms workers. 

As a result of the crisis, the Fed gained new authority over the 

Nation’s largest banks in nonbank firms designated as ‘‘systemically important.’’ If we learned anything from the financial crisis, 

it is that we all have a responsibility to remain vigilant in our 

oversight of Wall Street risk taking. 

Governor Tarullo has called for capping on the nondeposit liabilities of the largest financial institutions as a way to end too big to 

fail, a proposal similar to the one that introduced in 2010 that Dr. 

Meltzer commented on and that I offered as an amendment to the 

Dodd-Frank Act that both Democrats and Republicans, including 

some on this Committee, supported. 

We should hold a hearing on that proposal, Mr. Chair. We should 

give the Federal Reserve the authority to implement that. And 

rather than attempting to interfere in or, more problematically, dictate monetary policy, Congress should focus on whether the Fed is 

protecting consumers, as is its charge; ensuring safety and soundness, perhaps its most important function; and strengthening the 

financial stability of our financial system. 

The Committee should consider if the current governance of the 

Fed appropriately holds the regulators accountable and encourages 

diverse perspectives. For example, the Reserve Bank Presidents are 

not Presidentially appointed. We know the seven Washington Governors are. We know the Presidents of the 12 districts are not. The 

Class A and Class B Directors of each of the Federal Reserve Bank 

Boards are either member banks or chosen by the member banks. 

The Class C Directors are selected somehow, some way, but not all 

that specifically prescribed, by the Board of Governors in Washington, the Class C Directors in the 12 district. 

With independent and accountable leaders, diverse perspectives, 

and strong regulation, the Federal Reserve System can be responsive, should be more responsive to the American public. That is 

where we should focus our discussion of reforms. Some changes 

would require legislation, some would not. We should be thoughtful, we should be careful before we choose to proceed. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. Thank you. 

I would like to introduce our distinguished panel to the Committee. Their written testimony, all of it, will be made part of the 

record in its entirety. 

First we will hear the testimony of Dr. John B. Taylor, who is 

no stranger to this Committee. Dr. Taylor is the Mary and Robert 

Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He is a 

4 

well-known expert on monetary policy, and I welcome him again 

here today. 

Second we will hear from Dr. Allan Meltzer, who is the Allan H. 

Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy at the Tepper 

School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Meltzer 

wrote the definitive history of the Fed and is well regarded for his 

knowledge on this subject. We welcome you again to the Committee. 

Next we will hear testimony from Dr. Paul Kupiec, a Resident 

Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has held positions at the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Board, among others. 

Finally, we will hear from Mr. Peter Conti-Brown, an Academic 

Fellow at Stanford Law School, Rock Center for Corporate Governance, who has also written on these matters. 

I thank all of you for appearing here today. Dr. Taylor, we will 

start with you. You need to turn on the mic. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN B. TAYLOR, MARY AND ROBERT RAYMOND PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Brown, and other Members of the Committee, for inviting me to 

testify. I would like to focus on a particular reform that I think 

would improve the accountability and transparency of monetary 

policy and lead to better economic performance. The reform would 

simply require the Fed to describe its strategy for monetary policy. 

It is a reform about which you, Mr. Chairman, and Congressman 

Jeb Hensarling asked Fed Chair Janet Yellen quite a bit about at 

her hearings last week. 

The prime example of such a reform is a bill which passed the 

House Financial Services Committee last year. The bill would require that the Fed, and I quote, ‘‘describe the strategy or rule of 

the Federal Open Market Committee for the systematic quantitative adjustment’’ of its policy instruments. It would be the Fed’s 

job to choose the strategy and to describe it. The Fed could change 

the strategy or deviate from it if circumstances called for it, but the 

Fed would have to explain why. 

In considering the merits of such a reform, I think it is important 

to emphasize the word ‘‘strategy’’ in the bill. Though economists 

frequently use the word ‘‘rule’’ rather than ‘‘strategy,’’ the term 

‘‘rule’’ can sometimes be intimidating if one imagines, incorrectly, 

that a rules-based strategy must be purely mechanical. 

The Congress, through the Banking Committee and the Financial Services Committee, is in a good position—in fact, it is a 

unique position in our Government—to oversee monetary policy in 

a strategic sense, not in a tactical sense. 

Experienced policymakers know the importance of having a 

strategy and the close connection between a strategy and rulesbased processes. George Shultz put it this way, and I quote: ‘‘I 

think it is important, based on my own experience, to have a rulesbased monetary policy. If you have policy rule, you have a strategy. 

A strategy is a key element in getting somewhere.’’ 

Fed Chair Janet Yellen made similar observations when she 

served on the Federal Reserve Board in the 1990s. She explained, 

and I will quote, ‘‘The existence of policy tradeoffs requires a stratVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
5 

egy for managing them.’’ And then she went on to describe a policy 

rule pointing out ‘‘several desirable features’’ it has ‘‘as a general 

strategy for conducting monetary policy.’’ She also stated a rule 

would ‘‘help the Federal Reserve communicate to the public the rationale behind policy moves, and how those moves are consistent 

with its objectives.’’ 

Experience and research by many people over many years has 

shown that a rules-based monetary strategy leads to good economic 

performance. During periods when policy is more rules-based, as in 

much of the 1980s and the 1990s, the economy performed well. 

During periods such as the 1970s and the past decade when policy 

has been more discretionary, economic performance has been poor. 

But as economists Michael Belongia and Peter Ireland put it recently, ‘‘For all the talk about ‘transparency,’ . . . the process—or 

rule—by which the FOMC intends to defend its 2-percent inflation 

target remains unknown.’’ 

In answering questions last week, the Fed Chair said, and I 

quote, ‘‘I do not believe that the Fed should chain itself to any mechanical rule.’’ But the reforms in question would not chain the 

Fed. The Fed would choose its own strategy, which presumably 

would not be mechanical. And it could change or deviation from the 

strategy if it gave the reasons why. 

Another concern is that by publicly describing its strategy, the 

Fed would lose independence. But based on my own experience in 

Government, the opposite is more likely. A clear public strategy 

helps prevent policymakers from bending to pressure. 

Some have expressed concern that a rules-based strategy would 

be too rigid. But this reform provides flexibility. It would allow the 

Fed to serve as lender of last resort and take appropriate actions 

in the event of a crisis. 

Another concern is expressed by those who claim the reform 

would require the Fed to follow the so-called Taylor rule, but that 

is not the case. The bill from the House does require the Fed to 

describe how its strategy or rule might differ from a ‘‘reference 

rule,’’ which happens to be the Taylor rule. However, that is a natural and routine task for people who work on rules, and the Fed 

does it all the time. 

There is precedent for this type of congressional oversight. I 

think it is important to emphasize that, in this Committee in particular. Previous legislation, which was put in the Federal Reserve 

Act in 1977 and removed in the year 2000, required the Fed to report on the ranges of its money and credit aggregates. In many 

ways, the reform I am referring to today is simply needed to fill 

the void left by the removal of that requirement in the year 2000. 

The Congress and this Committee in particular have an opportunity to move forward on such a reform, I believe in a nonpartisan 

way, with constructive input from the Fed. The result would be a 

more effective monetary policy based on an accountable strategy. 

Thank you. I am happy to answer any questions. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Meltzer. 

6 

STATEMENT OF ALLAN H. MELTZER, THE ALLAN H. MELTZER 

UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, TEPPER 

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 

Mr. MELTZER. Mr. Chairman, Senator Brown, other Members, I 

welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue with you. 

Let me step back and ask, What do you think James Madison, 

the founder, the writer, the author of our Constitution, would say 

if he were told that an agency of the Federal Government has increased its balance sheet by a factor of four, four times what it had 

before, without any substantial oversight on the part of this Committee or the House Committee? I think he would be appalled. And 

I am appalled, and you should be appalled. That is a sign that we 

need change. We need change to improve the oversight that this 

Committee and the House Committee exercises over the Fed. You 

have the responsibility. Article I, Section 8 gives that to you. 

But you do not have the ability to exercise authority. You are 

busy people. You are involved in many issues. The Chairperson of 

the Fed is a person who has devoted his life to monetary policy. 

There is not any series of questions that you can ask on the fly that 

they are not going to be able to brush aside. That is why you need 

a rule. I agree with John Taylor about some of the reasons for the 

rule, but I believe one of the most important is that Congress has 

to fulfill its obligation to monitor the Fed, and it cannot do that 

now because the Chairman of the Fed can come in here, as Alan 

Greenspan has said on occasion, Paul Volcker has said on occasion, 

and they can tell you whatever it is they wish, and it is very hard 

for you to contradict them. 

So you need a rule which says, look, you said you were going to 

do this, and you have not done it. That requires an answer, and 

that I think is one of the most important reasons why we need 

some kind of a rule. 

Now, the idea of a rule is not some newfangled idea. The Federal 

Reserve in 1913 started under two substantial rules. Rules. One 

was the gold standard. The other was a rule which, listen, you are 

not allowed to buy any Government bonds for any purpose. That 

rule was relaxed, and then it was circumvented, because while they 

cannot lend money directly to the Treasury, they can buy it in the 

market, buy the Treasury’s debt in the market the moment after 

it comes out. So those rules were, by the 1920s and the 1930s, completely circumvented. The gold standard had gone. The other rule, 

which bound the Fed to be responsible and not to finance the 

Treasury’s debt the way it has been doing, those rules were gone. 

So there is a need for improved oversight, and there is a need 

for Congress to impose a burden on the Fed. 

Is the Fed now an independent agency? In part, but only in part. 

The New York Bank is the agent primarily these days of the New 

York banks. The Fed Board from the very beginning, back in Woodrow Wilson’s time, was always referred to as ‘‘the political branch 

of the Fed,’’ the regional banks being the academic or reliable public policy agencies. And as crises have occurred, the power of the 

Board has increased, and the power of the banks has been reduced. 

So the Fed is a more political institution than it has been in the 

past. 

7 

Senator Brown and Senator Vitter introduced a bipartisan bill 

dealing with the question of oversight of financial fragility. The essence of that bill is a simple but most important point. It asks you 

to think about this question: Who is going to be a better watchdog 

of responsible, prudent policies—the equity owners of a bank or the 

regulators? Well, we know the answer. The regulators totally failed 

in 2006 and 2007 to do things. They allowed agencies, banks, to set 

up off-balance-sheet facilities that bought these bad mortgages, had 

no capital in them. They did not regulate at all in advance of the 

crisis. In fact, they denied that there was such a thing as a need 

for regulation in advance of the crisis. 

The Brown-Vitter bill says the responsibility will be exercised 

most effectively if you put the capital requirement high enough so 

that if the management is lax, the principal stockholders will say, 

‘‘What in God’s name are you doing to our money?’’ That is what 

you want. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Kupiec. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL H. KUPIEC, RESIDENT SCHOLAR, 

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

Mr. KUPIEC. Chairman Shelby, Ranking Member Brown, and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for convening today’s hearing. I have submitted detailed written testimony which 

I will summarize in my oral remarks. 

Congress retains the responsibility for Federal Reserve oversight, 

and it may exercise this oversight in many ways—through laws requiring transparency and public disclosure, through regular reports 

to Congress, or through special hearings like today’s. 

Congress may also use the Government Accountability Office, or 

GAO, to investigate or audit Fed performance. GAO audits are a 

flexible tool. They produce useful reports overall, but these reports 

can sometimes be superficial and detect only obvious weaknesses 

in Government agency practices and performance. For monetary 

policy oversight, legislation will be required because existing laws 

prohibit the GAO from evaluating the Federal Reserve’s activities 

on monetary policy. 

The GAO, however, may examine other Federal Reserve activities, including the Fed’s expanded regulatory powers under the 

Dodd-Frank Act. In my opinion, many Federal Reserve Board regulatory activities merit closer congressional oversight. Because time 

is limited, I will focus on three areas that are especially important. 

First, Congress should examine the Fed’s involvement with international standard-setting bodies, like the Financial Stability Board, 

or FSB. The Fed has enormous influence over FSB policy development because the Fed contributes a very large and highly 

credentialed staff to these FSB activities. FSB working groups formulate the FSB’s financial stability policies, its G–SIFI designations, and its international agreements on heightened supervision 

and capital regulation. 

The FSB’s goal is to promote and impose uniform international 

financial stability policies on its members, and its members include 

the Federal Reserve Board. It is not a coincidence that the FSB 

regulatory policies are subsequently introduced as U.S. regulatory 

policy. But the Federal Reserve does not consult the Congress beVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
8 

fore negotiating or reaching agreement on FSB policy directives, 

even though these directives look a lot like international treaties. 

This worrisome pattern has appeared in FSOC designation decisions on insurance companies. The FSB published a list of insurance G–SIFIs, and only later were these G–SIFIs designated by the 

FSOC, despite protests from multiple U.S. insurance regulators on 

the designation. There are danger signs that this pattern will be 

repeated. On shadow banking, the FSB is in the process of making 

G–SIFI designations and formulating heightened supervision and 

capital regulations. For insurance, FSB work is underway on capital requirements and heightened regulations. 

My second suggestion is that Congress critically examine the recurring Board of Governors’ stress tests mandated by Section 165 

of the Dodd-Frank Act. These stress tests are very expensive for 

both banks and bank regulators. Yet there is no evidence that 

these tests are a cost-effective method for supervising individual financial institutions or for even identifying hidden risks in the financial sector. The quantitative test outcomes are arbitrary and 

completely under the control of the Federal Reserve Board because 

they are driven by the Fed’s subjective modeling judgments. The 

uncertainty associated with these tests make it difficult for banks 

to anticipate their capital needs when they consider future business plans. 

My final recommendation is for Congress to investigate the conflict that has been created by the Fed’s expanded insurance powers 

under Dodd-Frank. Using new powers, the Fed is now examining 

insurers that have long been examined by State insurance supervisors. The old system has worked perfectly well. 

About one-third of the insurance industry is now facing Fed supervision. For this industry segment, the Fed is also imposing bank 

holding company capital standards on top of the capital standards 

set by State insurance regulators. This Fed entry into domestic insurance supervision and the Fed’s participation in the FSB insurance work streams developing international capital standards for 

insurance companies has created concerns that the Fed will seek 

to impose bank-style capital regulation on all U.S. insurance companies. Dodd-Frank framers were careful not to create a national 

insurance regulator, and yet the Fed is taking steps that could in 

the near future make it de facto the national insurance regulator. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SHELBY. Mr. Conti-Brown. 

STATEMENT OF PETER CONTI-BROWN, ACADEMIC FELLOW, 

STANFORD LAW SCHOOL, ROCK CENTER FOR CORPORATE 

GOVERNANCE 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. Chairman Shelby, Ranking Member Brown, 

distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity you have given me to testify today. I am a legal scholar and 

a financial historian who focuses on the institutional evolution of 

the Federal Reserve System. Much of my written testimony and 

oral testimony I will be presenting today come from my book, ‘‘The 

Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve,’’ which is forthcoming from Princeton University Press, and a paper I presented 

9 

at the Brookings Institution yesterday. I note that I am here on my 

own behalf and do not speak for any organization. 

Since before its founding in 1913, the Fed has engendered enormous controversy. People recognize that the Fed wields extraordinary power over the economy, but they do not always see how 

that power operates or who exactly is pulling the levers. This opacity has prompted reform proposals from the left and the right 

throughout the Fed’s history. 

The solution to this opacity seems plain enough: Turn on the 

lights, increase transparency, define the Fed’s limits, and let the 

work of democratic politics drive the agenda for monetary policy in 

a clear and transparent way, as it does in so many other areas of 

our Government. 

I am very sympathetic to this impulse. The Fed is the people’s 

central bank and must, in appearance and in fact, make its policies 

on behalf of the entire people. But there is a unique tension in central banking that does not exist in other policy contexts. 

In terms of democratic control over monetary policy, there can be 

too much of a good thing. The innovation of central bank independence or the separation of monetary policy from the day-to-day of 

electoral politics helps us as a democracy to take the long view 

when it comes to the value of our currency and the management 

of financial and economic crises and economic growth. Short-term 

political considerations are useful in many contexts, but managing 

the value of the currency has not historically been one of them. 

The legislative task then is to balance this tension between the 

need, even the constitutional demand, to make the Fed democratically accountable without turning it into a political football that 

erases this institutional innovation of central bank independence. 

We must maintain that buffer between the day-to-day operation of 

monetary policy and the day-to-day of electoral politics. 

The legislative proposals to reform the Fed currently pending before the Congress, as with literally hundreds of others that have 

preceded them, deal with the need to strike this balance with varying degrees of success. In general, these proposals come in two 

forms: they either deal with the functions of the Federal Reserve 

or with its structure. In other words, they seek to dictate macroeconomic policies or seek to influence the Fed’s personnel. 

I am generally more sympathetic to structural changes to the 

Fed than to functional ones. To illustrate, let me discuss very briefly two pending proposals: the Audit the Fed bill and Senator Reed’s 

bill changing the governance structure of the Federal Reserve Bank 

of New York. 

First, Audit the Fed. This is, as the saying goes, something of a 

solution looking for a problem. The Fed is, as Senator Brown already noted, already audited, its balance sheet increasingly transparent, its communications with the public increasingly frequent 

and clear. Indeed, the entire language of balance sheets and profits 

and leverage and equity are at best metaphors, at worst fictions, 

when applied to the Fed. And this bill would insert Congress into 

the day-to-day of monetary policymaking, a place that Congress 

has historically, rightly, decided to avoid. 

Ironically, although most of the proponents of the public audit 

focus on combating inflation, the proposal risks institutionalizing 

10 

pressure to pursue the inflationary policies that usually command 

the strongest support in a democracy. Indeed, the first adopters of 

a public audit were not inflation hawks but employment doves. 

Second, Senator Reed has proposed to subject the President of 

the New York Fed to Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. I like this proposal much more. The New York Fed occupies a unique place in our financial system. It has a permanent 

vote on the Federal Open Market Committee, the only one without 

a Presidential appointment. And given its location, it supervises 

some of the largest banks in the country. That its President is selected in part by the banks it must regulate is, frankly, astonishing 

from a governance perspective. This governance structure feeds the 

popular impulse that the banking regulators do not work for the 

people. This view cannot be dismissed as a crank conspiracy theory. It finds support in the structure of the Federal Reserve Act 

itself. 

Allowing the regulated banks to have this kind of direct, proximate control over their Federal regulators should be addressed. It 

makes the Reserve Banks something of the gall bladder of the financial system: they perform a useful but not essential function on 

behalf of the regulated banks in good times, but can allow the 

banks to introduce extraordinary risk into the system in bad. A 

public appointment at the New York Fed would balance the need 

to ensure that the Fed serves the public interest without eliminating the valuable buffer between the Fed and the daily press of 

electoral politics. 

An alternative to this proposal would be to remove the bankers 

and their representatives from the Fed’s governance structure completely and render the Reserve Banks fully subordinate to the publicly accountable Board of Governors. Regardless, the Reserve 

Banks’ governance represents in appearance and in fact the kind 

of private influence over public goods that our political institutions 

are designed to prevent. 

Thank you again for this opportunity. I look forward to your 

questions. 

Chairman SHELBY. Thank you, sir. 

Currently, the New York Fed President permanently holds Vice 

Chairmanship on the Federal Open Market Committee that you alluded to, with four remaining votes allocated to the other 11 regional banks on a rotating basis. Dallas Fed President Richard 

Fisher recently addressed the concern, and I will quote, and he 

says, ‘‘Too much power is concentrated in the New York Fed.’’ He 

put forward a proposal that would, among other things, rotate the 

Vice Chairmanship and give the Federal Reserve Bank Presidents 

the same number of votes as the Washington-based Governors, 

save the Federal Reserve Chair. 

To all of you, and, Dr. Taylor, I will start with you, do you support any of Mr. Fisher’s proposals? 

Mr. TAYLOR. I think that is a good start. He points to a problem 

about the New York Fed and proposes a solution which kind of 

equalizes across the other members. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Meltzer. 

Mr. MELTZER. I agree with Mr. Fisher. My own proposal was 

that the Presidents of the Reserve Banks should be given the votVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
11 

ing power because they are much more—the Boards have been 

changed over the years. They now have labor union representatives, women representatives. They are no longer banker boards, 

and they represent something much closer to the public interest 

than we get from the New York Fed, which represents the New 

York banks. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Kupiec. 

Mr. KUPIEC. The New York Fed has enormous power within the 

Federal Reserve System. They have the closest contacts with the 

markets. They typically feed a lot of the market intelligence to the 

Board of Governors and control the information flow. So I think 

methods to level the playing field and make other parts of the 

country equally important. Some have discussed not just rotating 

the Vice Chairman of the FOMC, but actually moving the markets 

desk across different banks. This would give each bank access for 

a certain period of time and give access to the markets and have 

backup facilities available if something were ever to happen, God 

forbid, in New York or somewhere else again. 

So I think it makes a lot of sense to diversify the New York 

power base across the system. Thank you. 

Chairman SHELBY. Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. I also agree that this is a very good first step 

in the right direction. I would make two points, one of law and one 

of history. 

Legally, the Federal Reserve Act does not dictate who will be the 

Vice Chair of the FOMC. That is determined by the FOMC’s internal regulations. So it is only by convention and tradition that the 

New York Fed President is the Vice Chair. So President Fisher’s 

recommendation could be instituted tomorrow by the FOMC. 

Second, historically it is inaccurate, too, to say that the New 

York Fed has always had a permanent vote on the FOMC. Between 

the years of 1935 and 1942, it rotated along with the over Reserve 

Bank Presidents. So this is also something that has a precedent in 

history and something that I think—anything that would deemphasize the influence in perception and in fact of representatives of the 

financial industry in New York I think would be a step in the right 

direction. 

Chairman SHELBY. Rules-based monetary policy. Dr. Taylor, you 

are well known for your work in developing a monetary policy rule 

known as the Taylor rule. We talk about it here a lot. You indicated in your opening statement that such a rule, whether it be the 

Taylor rule or another rule, would more effectively highlight the 

Fed’s strategy, as you talked about. As you stated, Chair Yellen 

said that she would not be a proponent of chaining the Federal 

Open Market Committee in its decision making to any rule whatsoever. You mentioned several reasons why this should not be the 

real case. 

Would you discuss in a little more detail how Congress could 

structure a monetary policy rule to allow flexibility and predictability, not to make monetary policy but to do proper oversight? 

Mr. TAYLOR. I think the key is to require that the Fed describe, 

choose, its own policy rule, its own strategy. I think it also should 

be permitted to change it if circumstances change. The world is not 

12 

a constant place. And if there is a crisis, there is going to be a deviation from time to time. 

Designing the rule, implementing the rule is the responsibility of 

the Fed. But the Congress has, I think, the role of requiring that 

the Fed have the strategy and describe it to you. I think that is 

the key to not micromanaging, not threatening the independence, 

but having the accountability and exercising the accountability that 

the Congress should have with respect to this agency. 

Chairman SHELBY. Currently the Federal Open Market Committee transcripts are supposed to be released 5 years after meetings take place. Even with this 5-year lag, the most recent transcripts on the Federal Reserve Web site date to 2008. 

This is a question for all of you. What timeframe do you think 

is appropriate, if you do, for the release of these transcripts in 

order to strike an appropriate balance between transparency and 

not compromising market-sensitive information? We should never 

want to do that. Dr. Taylor, we will start with you. 

Mr. TAYLOR. I think a lot of studies show that the transcripts 

themselves and the releases have affected the nature of the discussion at the FOMC, and I think you have to recognize that transparency can go too far. You do not want to have C–SPAN broadcasting the meetings. So there has to be a decision. I do not think 

the 5 years has been shown to be any more problems than 3 years 

would. I think it could be closer in time. It would enable people to 

study important events like the financial crisis. We had to wait for 

quite a while until that happened. 

I think that it is also important to try to make sure there is a 

consistency between more current things, like the minutes and the 

transcripts—the minutes and the transcripts are supposed to coincide with the same events. One is released before the other. But 

over time you can check the consistency between those. The minutes do give you a chance to see a little earlier; the transcripts are 

later. I think that would also go a way to improving the transparency without interfering with the decision making. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Meltzer, do you have an opinion? 

Mr. MELTZER. The problem with many of these proposals is they 

do not look at what will be the circumvention. If you said you have 

to release your minutes at the end of a year, they would not have 

much information in them. That is, they just would not say it in 

a place where you could see it. 

What I think the Congress needs to do, it needs to face up to its 

responsibility. Its responsibility is to be able to say to the Fed, 

‘‘You told us you were going to do this, and you did not do it. Why?’’ 

And that is where the rule gives you leverage to do it, and that is 

more important—I mean, I know, Senator, a bill that wants to 

make more transparent the minutes of the Fed. Ask yourselves, 

suppose you had them, how would you be better able to monitor 

what the Fed does because you have them? My opinion is you 

would not. You have to get a discipline in the Fed to tell you what 

it is going to do and do it. That is, I believe—— 

Chairman SHELBY. That is more important, isn’t it? 

Mr. MELTZER. More important than any other single thing that 

you can do. You do not have the ability now to monitor them. 

Chairman SHELBY. You have a comment, Dr. Kupiec? 

13 

Mr. KUPIEC. Sure. I think the longer the lag in releasing the detailed minutes of the meetings, the easier it is to forget if the Fed 

sort of, you know, did the right thing or not the right thing. Five 

years is a long time. It is hard to remember what happened back 

then. Shortening the lag would increase accountability, I think, in 

some ways, but I think you have the information and the problems 

that you have heard Dr. Meltzer—— 

Chairman SHELBY. We just have to reach a medium which 

makes sense, would we not? 

Mr. KUPIEC. It has got to be short enough that there is a memory 

for what was going on and whether they were discussing the right 

things and doing the right things. I mean, if you go back to what 

we find out before the crisis, you find out they were woefully uninformed, even through the summer of 2007 when subprime mortgages were blowing up and—— 

Chairman SHELBY. We found it out right here. 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes, and that is kind of scary. So, yes, there is a 

tradeoff there. 

Chairman SHELBY. Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. The only thing I would add to echo these sentiments is the nature by which this information has been disclosed 

over time, so not only does the Fed disclose its transcripts on a 5- 

year lag, but its minutes after several weeks, and the decision itself 

after several hours, all of which are innovations in the practice of 

central banking within the last several decades. I think it illustrates a central point that I think is worth emphasizing, that central bank transparency under Chairman Bernanke, Chair Yellen, 

and Chair Greenspan has been expanding over time. So none of 

this is written in the Federal Reserve Act itself but is an innovation of the Fed. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Meltzer, I have a couple of questions I 

want to direct to you, if you would. You have written extensively— 

and you have testified here about this before—about the topic of 

Federal independence. One rough measure of independence you 

have cited is the portion of a budget deficit financed by issuing 

base money. 

Could you elaborate on how this measure has changed in recent 

years? Does the Fed take actions today that threaten its independence? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. I am glad you asked. When the Fed started, 

as I said in my testimony, they were not allowed to buy Government bonds at all under any circumstances. That was relaxed. 

Then they circumvented it so they could buy mostly Treasury bills, 

and until even through World War II, up to World War II, they 

bought mostly Treasury bills. And after World War II, one of the 

great Chairmen of the Fed, William McChesney Martin, wanted to 

institute, and did, bills only; the Fed would only buy bills. That is 

because he wanted a sound, secure, competitive bond market, and 

he thought the way to get that was to keep the Fed out of that 

market, because if they were in the market, they would dominate 

the market. And that had the great advantage that the central 

bank—the reason we had the original rule was the people back in 

1913 understood that the great danger to a central bank is that it 

finances—it is used to finance the Government budget. That is 

14 

what they have been doing. They keep the interest rate low, and 

then they pay 90 percent of the interest that they collect back to 

the Treasury. So it does not cost the Treasury anything to finance 

these huge deficits, and it takes away any of the incentives we 

would have to begin to think about how over the long term are we 

going to solve the fiscal policy problem of the United States, with 

not just the budget deficit but something on the order of $100 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. I mean, that is a lot of money, 

even for a country like ours. And we are not going to be able to 

pay $100 trillion for the unfunded liabilities. 

So we need to find a human way to change the health care laws 

so that we take care of the indigent and we do not wreck the economy. And we are not doing that, and that is a problem. And if we 

wait until it becomes a crisis, then we will—as sure as God makes 

green apples, we will do something which will be draconian and 

harmful and difficult for the public. 

Chairman SHELBY. A lot of us are very interested in greater accountability and oversight of the Fed, like any institution, but also 

we would like to strengthen the independence of the Fed. How do 

we do this? 

Mr. MELTZER. I think a rule—think back to the period, not the 

very end but the years from 1985–86, when Alan Greenspan became Chairman, to about 2002. We had the longest period in our 

history, in the Federal Reserve history, of stable growth, short, 

mild recessions, low inflation. There were no complaints about the 

Fed. It was very responsible. It worked well. It operated more or 

less, not slavishly but more or less in response to the Taylor rule. 

That is what Greenspan did. 

Why did it work better? Because one of the great mistakes that 

the Fed is pressured to make is it pays too much attention to the 

latest news and what is happening now; whereas, all of its abilities 

are to resolve longer-term, medium-term problems. And when he 

adopted the Taylor rule, he essentially adopted a medium-term 

strategy, and that worked exceedingly well, the best in the whole 

100-year history of the Fed. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Taylor, do you want to add anything to 

that? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Well, I agree, it is a period which economists focus 

on a lot. We call it the ‘‘Great Moderation’’ in the sense it has been 

smooth and had a long boom. And there has been debate about 

what it is, but I think Allan is—monetary policy is a big part of 

that, and they had followed a steady-as-you-go strategy, simple, 

people understood it, and it worked very well. 

In fact, I could add something to this, Mr. Chairman. It is pretty 

clear to me when they started moving away from that is when 

things started being problematic in the economy. I have written a 

lot about that; especially around 2003, 2004, and 2005, that rate 

was held remarkably low compared to history, compared to the period Allan is referring to. There was excessive risk taking, a search 

for yield; the regulatory apparatus became a problem as well, and 

I think that was a big factor in the mess that we got into. And 

since then, it has been pretty much off again as well. 

Chairman SHELBY. Senator Brown, you have been very patient. 

Thank you. 

15 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Always. Thank you. 

Income inequality by some measures has reached its highest levels in perhaps nine decades. In 1983, the Fed began the survey of 

consumer finances. Thanks to this data, we can see that the wealth 

gap has widened for white families compared to nonwhite families 

over the past 30 years. I apologize to Senator Warren and Senator 

Donnelly for not being able to see this, but you already know this 

stuff because you are so prescient, both of you. 

It seems to me the Fed has cared about these issues for some 

time. I think it is entirely appropriate, as the strength of our economy should not and I think cannot be divorced from how families 

are faring. 

I would like to hear your views, each of you, starting with Dr. 

Taylor, if you would. Do you think the Fed should care about 

wealth and income inequality? Is that something in the purview of 

the Fed to care about? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, I think individuals on the Fed, like anybody 

else, are concerned about it. I am concerned about it. I think as an 

institution it is very important, especially independent institutions, 

to have limited purposes. It cannot solve every problem in America. 

And what has happened in some sense is an independent, limitedpurpose organization has begun to expand it scope. Allan Meltzer 

mentioned a number of those things. The goals of the Fed—price 

stability, as suggested by the Congress, employment, low interest 

rates, all those things—those are the macro responsibilities that 

they currently have at this point in time. 

I believe that as an important part of our overall economic policy, 

if we get that right, if we get that macroeconomic part right, monetary policy right, then there are a lot of things that public policy 

can do to address the problem that you are referring to here. 

I have written about it. We probably all have written about it. 

There is tax policy. There is regulatory policy. Growth itself is so 

important. Our growth rate in this expansion has been 2.2 percent. 

I think a lot of that is because of policy. We would help this income 

distribution tremendously if we had better opportunity for people 

at the lower 30 percent to grow and thrive with more jobs and better jobs. It seems to me that should be the focus. The Fed should 

focus on what its responsibilities are. We have other instruments 

of Government. It is an allocation of responsibility. It is a governance issue. It is what has worked well in the past, and I think we 

should continue with that overall approach. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you. Before Dr. Meltzer, just to be clear, 

employment—you said employment, suggested by the Congress. It 

is actually mandated, as you know, the dual mandate. It is not just 

suggested by Congress. 

Dr. Meltzer, your thoughts? And I am not sure from Dr. Taylor’s 

comments if he thinks that income inequality should be a purpose 

of the Fed to address that. I understand that—or one of the purposes. I was not entirely clear. If you could be as specific as possible. 

Mr. MELTZER. The Fed, like any organization, does its best work 

if it has a single motive to go to. If we give it many different motives or objectives, we spoil its path. 

16 

I am glad you asked the question because I think this is a subject on which I am currently working, which I am very interested 

in, and think is really a major issue for our country. Redistribution 

has not helped to spread the distribution of income. As a matter 

of fact, it worsens it. 

Just ask yourself, if redistribution was the way to equalize incomes, France would be the richest and most equal country in the 

world. Instead, it is lagging behind many of its neighbors. 

Ask yourself this question: How did your relatives, my relatives, 

get to be from immigrant status to middle-class and wealthier status in many cases? They came here ignorant, lacking in skills. 

They took jobs. When they took those jobs, output went up. But the 

distribution of income widened because they were getting low pay. 

My first job in a major company was 25 cents an hour. I do better 

than that these days. 

How did they get to the middle class? They got there by learning 

on the job. Companies trained them, so they learned more. And as 

they learned more, output expanded, but productivity went up. And 

as their productivity went up, their wages went up. That is the 

way—— 

Senator BROWN. Well, let me interrupt—— 

Mr. MELTZER. ——we get a middle class. 

Senator BROWN. We do have limited time. Correct, except look at 

the charts, which we do not have here, since 1973—— 

Mr. MELTZER. Because we are not investing—this is the lowest 

rate of investment of any postwar business cycle. It is the lowest 

rate of productivity growth. That is why the middle class—— 

Senator BROWN. But there has been such a disconnect between 

productivity growth and income growth, and you can blame that on 

Fed action, inaction, or other things, but it is clearly more complicated than that. 

Mr. MELTZER. One of the things that the welfare State does, 

which is counterproductive, is it does not get them to make those 

steps which are important, that is, to go from the first job, learn 

on the job—— 

Senator BROWN. I am sorry, Dr. Meltzer. It is hard for me to 

blame—it sounds like you are blaming the worker who is increasingly productive for not being smart enough to share in the wealth 

he creates for his employer. But that is far afield. Let me go on in 

this question. I apologize. 

Dr. Kupiec, your thought on the Fed’s role in dealing with income inequality? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes, I think income inequality is an important problem for everybody. I am not sure how you exactly work an income 

inequality mandate into a monetary policy decision making role. 

Here you have income inequality by race. I do not know how you 

tell the Fed to do monetary policy according to race. That makes 

no sense to me. But I would say that Federal Reserve monetary 

policy largely works by redistributing income. Right now retirees 

and savers make nothing for 6 years now; whereas, borrowers are 

encouraged—borrowing is very cheap. So the Federal Reserve and 

monetary policy plays a role in the distribution of income, but it 

is not always the one that encourages the distribution you may like 

to see in the end. 

17 

Senator BROWN. Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. So, in a word, yes. The Fed should and does 

and has focused on income inequality. There is the Jackson Hole 

Symposium hosted by the Kansas City Fed each year. In 1998, its 

theme was income inequality, and then-Chairman Greenspan gave 

a very good speech talking about how income inequality as a topic 

of conversation among economists should be brought out from the 

cold, and I agree with that. And I think that Chairman Greenspan 

and since then Bernanke and Yellen have done well by focusing on 

this issue. I do not think that anyone is saying that interest rates 

should be dropped for the redistributional consequences among 

debtors and creditors in order to adjust the chasms between different sections of our economy. I think instead it is to understand 

what are the consequences of this kind of income inequality to the 

mandates that the Congress has given the Fed. I think to ignore 

that, to say that income inequality is outside of our bailiwick, is to 

ignore the very clear connections that income inequality can have 

on price stability, financial stability, and maximum employment. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Let me go to the Audit the Fed issue more directly. You described the proposals in your opening testimony as solutions in 

search of problems. On the other hand, it is hard to argue against 

more transparency and accountability. Why not ask the GAO to 

audit their monetary policy? How do you argue against more transparency that you have all talked about? 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. Right, I mean, you do not argue with the importance of transparency. The question that is important here is: 

Do we want to throw organizational complexity at one of the most 

organizationally complex agencies of Government? So putting the 

GAO into the business of both evaluating and, frankly—as there is 

not much difference between evaluation and implementation—and 

implementing monetary policy strikes me as a very dangerous idea. 

It adds, frankly, and ironically, opacity to this organization rather 

than taking it away. 

I think that is why focusing on governance structures so that we 

have a clear line between the people, their representatives in the 

Senate and the House, and then through the Congress to the Fed 

is better so that we know when as citizens there is something that 

we like about the Fed or do not like about the Fed, we have a clear 

mechanism of conveying that. When we separate those powers 

among different organizations within Government, it can muddy 

those waters and make it less clear whom we should hold accountable. 

Senator BROWN. Dr. Meltzer, be specific, if you would, about your 

thoughts about the Audit the Fed proposals. 

Mr. MELTZER. I think you do not get what you want. Suppose 

you knew everything. Suppose you found out that the Fed chooses 

its policy using a Ouija board. What would you be able to do with 

that? 

What you want to do is get something which permits you to see 

that the policies that are carried out are carried for the benefit of 

the public. Knowing how they make those decisions—let me give 

you an example. There is a rule now—it may be a law—that says 

if three members of the Fed meet together, they have to consider 

18 

it a meeting. So three members of the Fed do not meet together. 

They circumvent the law. That is not going to get you the information you want. The information you want has to come from having 

something very deliberate that you know they are going to do and 

that they tell you they are going to do, and you are able to say, 

‘‘You did not do it,’’ or, ‘‘You did.’’ 

Senator BROWN. Thank you. One last real quick question, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Last week, during congressional testimony after Chair Yellen 

was here, she testified at the House Financial Services Committee, 

and she was criticized, in part, by, I believe, the Chairman and a 

number of other House members for meeting with Secretary Lew, 

although Chairman Bernanke met apparently weekly with Secretary Geithner during his tenure. Just a yes or no question, starting with you, Dr. Taylor: Do you believe the Chair of the Federal 

Reserve should meet with the Secretary of the Treasury? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes. 

Senator BROWN. Dr. Meltzer. 

Mr. MELTZER. Sure. 

Senator BROWN. Dr. Kupiec—— 

Mr. MELTZER. Let me say that President Wilson at the start of 

the Fed would not invite Fed Governors to social events at the 

White House because he did not want to influence them. But I believe that they should meet because they have common problems. 

Senator BROWN. OK. Dr. Kupiec. 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes, but there should be a balance of interaction between the executive branch and the Congress, I think. And I think 

it is probably overweighted to Treasury. 

Senator BROWN. Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. Yes. 

Senator BROWN. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. Senator Rounds. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am not sure if this is anecdotal or exactly how accurate it is, 

but I recall the statement that between 2009 and the end of 2013, 

there was an increase in the employment rate among financial institutions in this country by over 300,000 individuals being employed. You would normally think of an increase in the employment rate as an increase in productivity, but that has not happened, specifically because the vast majority of that 300,000 was in 

the area of compliance. The Federal Reserve has, among other 

things, a responsibility for the regulatory aspects within the banking industry—not alone but, nonetheless, a part of it. 

I was going to ask Dr. Kupiec—and I hope I am saying that correctly—in your testimony you make the point that the Federal Reserve does a lot more than set monetary policy. It is also a major 

financial regulator. This means that the Federal Reserve essentially has two sides: setting monetary policy and financial regulation. Giving the Federal Reserve the freedom to set monetary policy 

is important, but how can we preserve that freedom while making 

sure that their regulatory decisions are just as accountable as any 

other Federal agency? 

19 

Mr. KUPIEC. Well, some people think the Fed should be stripped 

of its regulatory authority and those regulatory authorities should 

be given to other agencies. That is probably the most extreme view. 

The Congress has the complete ability to audit the Federal Reserve on its supervision activities. They are not restricted in any 

way by any law, by the GAO or otherwise, on hearings or other 

things, to audit the Federal Reserve’s regulatory activities, at least 

to any degree I can find in the law. 

Senator ROUNDS. Would you suggest that it is simply a failure 

on the part of the Congress to exercise that authority? 

Mr. KUPIEC. I think since the Dodd-Frank Act has come into 

being, the Federal Reserve has extensive powers that it did not use 

to have, and I think the case for much more congressional oversight now is far stronger than it was in the past. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you. 

Dr. Meltzer, if I could, I find your comments refreshing, and as 

I have watched, I think your message suggesting that there are 

some limitations that the Fed has with regard to being able to fix 

issues within our society is something that you point out, and I 

think you did a very nice job, sir. And I thank my colleague Senator Brown for that question. 

I noticed that the table that they provided showed only up 

through the year 2010. It would be interesting to have observed 

what the changes might have been between 2010 and 2014 as well. 

But for you, sir, if you could, in the year 2012 you wrote that for 

60 years, from the mid-1920s through 1986, the Federal Reserve’s 

minutes showed almost no discussion of policy issues. You then 

contrasted this with the Fed’s recent actions on quantitative easing. Are you concerned that the Fed is becoming more reactive to 

short-term changes? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes, much too reactive to short-term changes. I 

have been a practicing economist for 57 years. The one thing that 

I have certainly learned is economics is not the science that tells 

you good—gives you good quarterly forecasts. There is no such 

science. There is just too much randomness in the world to be able 

to predict accurately what happens from quarter to quarter. So to 

improve what we do, we should look over longer terms. We can do 

a lot of good for the public if we get them on a stable path. We do 

not do that. 

I will give you an example, which you are all familiar with, I believe. The Fed for many years in recent times—it has given it up 

now—concentrated its attention on the growth in the employment 

rate that came out every month. The report would come out; it 

would go up, the market would boom. People would be very happy. 

The same number would be revised the next month, and it would 

be lowered. 

Now, what was the point of concentrating on changing the policies on the basis of a number which was largely a random number 

that got it right. Instead of saying, look, our objective is to get back 

to full employment with low inflation, and this is the way—we 

know how to do that. But we do not do it. We concentrate too much 

on the short term. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you. 

20 

For Dr. Taylor, in your testimony you talk about the importance 

of having a transparent and predictable rule to guide the Federal 

Reserve policy. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that the Federal 

Reserve decisions impact Main Street as much as if not more than 

Wall Street. I know that several of Members of the Committee 

have also suggested the need for a rule, and I would invite you if 

you would begin. How can you discuss—or can you discuss how the 

Taylor rule would help to create economic stability and what it 

would do for Main Street businesses and consumers? And then I 

would open it up at that point for other Members if they would also 

like to comment on it. Dr. Taylor? 

Mr. TAYLOR. One thing is the predictability itself. It is important 

because so much of policy becomes unpredictable and hard to interpret. There is uncertainty, business decisions and life decisions 

that are based on some sense of certainty, so a more rules-based 

policy would deliver that. 

I think the best thing, though, for communicating about this is 

history and the fact that, as Allan Meltzer mentioned, we have had 

so much experience in the U.S. and other countries when policy is 

more predictable, monetary policy in particular, when it is rulesbased, the economy works better. People know what is happening. 

It is more reliable. In a sense, the decisions are easier. We can see 

that in the United States. You can see it in other countries. You 

can see it in emerging markets. There is just a tremendous amount 

of evidence for that. And I think from people who do not follow the 

Fed every day, it just kind of makes sense. Here is what they do. 

One of the things I found years ago in making proposals, central 

bankers, who were just maybe appointed to be president of their 

bank, and somebody from out of the country would come and they 

said, ‘‘Well, this is terrific. Now I kind of know what to do. I did 

not know that.’’ You know, here is a description which is fairly 

easy, and then they talk about it to people in their country. It is 

amazing. All over the world this is happening. 

So we have a lot of experience with this. In a way it makes common sense. I tried to quote people like George Shultz, Janet Yellen 

herself has found this, this kind of experience. So there is just tremendous evidence for this. And I can refer to academic studies, 

compare different periods of time when things worked better. But 

ultimately it comes down to common sense. An independent agency 

should have limited purposes, it should be accountable. You can see 

it better. Allan Meltzer says just having an audit, just having earlier release of transcripts or minutes is not enough if there is not 

a description of what their strategy or their rule is. And I would 

say I cannot see why someone would object to an independent 

agency describing its strategy. What is the problem with that? You 

are not telling it what the strategy would be. You are saying just 

tell us your rule, tell us your strategy. I think it would work a lot 

better. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Meltzer, do you want to comment on 

that? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes, I want to make a very simple point. Last 

week, Stanley Fischer, whom I admire greatly and who is a good 

friend, gave a talk at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. In it he 

cited what was accomplished by $4 trillion worth of QE. He said, 

21 

‘‘We lowered the unemployment rate by 11⁄4 percentage points.’’ 

The rest of the drop in the unemployment rate is something about 

which we should be very concerned. We for a long time have had 

people, men over 60, dropping out of the labor force. We now have 

men 18 to 34—and women, too, presumably—dropping out of the 

labor force. They do not get training. They do not learn on the job. 

They do not have productivity growth. They are a problem for our 

future. That is what the Fed accomplished with $4 trillion? 

Senator ROUNDS. Mr. Chairman, I believe my time has expired. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SHELBY. Thank you. 

Senator Warren. 

Senator WARREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all for 

being here. 

During the financial crisis, Congress bailed out the big banks 

with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and that is 

a lot of money. But the biggest money for the biggest banks was 

never voted on by Congress. Instead, between 2007 and 2009, the 

Fed provided over $13 trillion in emergency lending to just a handful of large financial institutions. That is nearly 20 times the 

amount authorized in the TARP bailout. 

Now, let us be clear. Those Fed loans were a bailout, too. Nearly 

all the money went to too-big-to-fail institutions. For example, in 

one emergency lending program, the Fed put out $9 trillion, and 

over two-thirds of the money went to just three institutions: 

Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch. Those loans were 

made available at rock-bottom interest rates, in many cases under 

1 percent, and the loans could be continuously rolled over so they 

were effectively available for an average of about 2 years. 

Now, in Section 1101 of Dodd-Frank, Congress said no more 

back-door bailouts. It recognized that the Fed should still serve as 

the lender of last resort, but that there should be strict limitations 

on its emergency lending authority so that big financial institutions 

could not count on the Fed to bail them out if they made a bunch 

of wild bets and then lost. 

Now, recently, the Fed released a proposed rule implementing 

Section 1101. Dr. Meltzer, do you think that the Fed’s proposed 

rule on emergency lending prevents back-door bailouts as Congress 

intended? 

Mr. MELTZER. No. I congratulate you, Senator Warren, for keeping this issue alive. It is a disgrace that we have got so much 

money thrown at such low interest rates at so few banks. And the 

Dodd-Frank Act in its heart may talk about getting rid of too big 

to fail, but at the heart of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Secretary of the 

Treasury is authorized to do exactly what Secretaries of the Treasury have been doing for years. 

The way to get out of that is to get the Fed out of the too-bigto-fail business, pass the Brown-Vitter bill, which says the bank is 

responsible for its errors, make it have capital. 

Now, why did we move away from that? See, we started with the 

idea that the Government’s responsibility was a legitimate responsibility to protect the payment system. We have shifted that to 

where it protects the banks. We want to go back to protecting the 

22 

payment system, and we want to get them out of the too-big-to-fail 

business. 

Senator WARREN. Thank you, Dr. Meltzer. And what I want to 

do for just a second is stay focused on Rule 1101. You have got the 

larger picture, but I want to stay on this part, because there is a 

rule pending right now from the Federal Reserve Bank. 

Last August, I joined with Republicans and Democrats to send 

a letter to the Fed urging it to strengthen its emergency lending 

rule. Three others on that letter are on this Committee: Ranking 

Member Brown, Senator Vitter over there, and Senator Cotton. 

And the letter included some specific ideas for strengthening the 

rule, trying to prevent this form of back-door bailout. It will not 

stop them all. We have got a lot of things we need to work on, but 

this one. 

So, Dr. Meltzer, I just want to run through some of the ideas 

that were in our joint letter and ask you if you could just briefly 

give your thoughts on them. 

One suggestion, establish in advance that any emergency lending 

will be offered at a penalty rate, not a rate well below market 

rates. 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes, because that leaves, for example, the example 

of banks taking the money that was pushed on them, insisted 

upon, and use it to buy up other banks. 

Senator WARREN. All right. The second one, establish in advance 

that emergency lending would not be available to any institution 

at or near insolvency. 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. 

Senator WARREN. Good. Third, establish in advance that an 

emergency lending program is for a systemwide problem and used 

by a number of institutions large and small, not just to bail out one 

or two giant institutions. 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes, that is a way of protecting the payment system, which is essential for the maintenance of the economy. But it 

is not important. There is—if we have the right set of rules, we do 

not have to worry about bank failures any more than we have to 

worry about corporate failures. 

Senator WARREN. Thank you, and let me just try a fourth one 

here. I am a little over time, but if I can do a fourth one, establish 

in advance that any lending facilities would be made available only 

for a short, defined period of time so that banks could not excessively roll over the loans. 

Mr. MELTZER. Good. 

Senator WARREN. Good. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. 

Meltzer. This is a critically important aspect of Dodd-Frank that 

the Fed has just glossed over. If big financial institutions know 

that they can rely on the Fed to save them if they start to falter, 

then they have every incentive to take on more risk and to threaten the entire system. These rules are not yet final, so the Fed still 

has an opportunity to place real limitations on its emergency lending. But if the Fed fails to do that, I believe Congress should act. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. Senator Vitter. 

Senator VITTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to continue this same line of discussion because I strongly agree with it. 

23 

My biggest concern in this whole space since the crisis, including 

Dodd-Frank, including Fed action or inaction, is what I think is 

clearly the continuation of too big to fail. Just by the numbers, concentration in our banking system has grown significantly. The four 

largest U.S. banks are 25 percent larger by assets today than they 

were in 2007. 

According to FDIC, the top four control 43 percent of all the assets. The top six U.S. banks have assets equal to about 63 percent 

of the U.S. economy. So just by the numbers, the threat is greater. 

Let me first—— 

Mr. MELTZER. We are creating monopolies. 

Senator VITTER. Yes. Let me first ask all four of you, do any of 

you consider that trend either positive or neutral, not necessarily 

negative? 

Mr. MELTZER. Negative. 

Senator VITTER. Anybody else disagree with that? 

Mr. TAYLOR. No. 

Senator VITTER. OK. Do any of you think if one of those megainstitutions were threatened today, they would not essentially be 

bailed out, that they would not have emergency lending authority 

or some other means to continue without serious repercussions? 

Anybody want to offer an opinion? 

Mr. MELTZER. They would be bailed out. 

Senator VITTER. Anybody disagree with that? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, with the current situation, they would. I think 

there are some things that can be done, but in the current situation it is, unfortunately, very likely. 

Mr. KUPIEC. I would say it would depend on circumstances. I 

think if one very large institutional loan would get into trouble, 

people might use Dodd-Frank powers and put that through a liquidation, one in isolation. But the probability of that happening is 

nil. It is probably a crisis situation and all of them are weak. So 

I take your point. 

Mr. MELTZER. Senator Vitter, let me just take a minute to explain to you why I am sure that would happen. The Secretary of 

the Treasury would be confronted—would meet with his staff. They 

would tell him all the things that could happen, disastrous things. 

They do not know they are going to happen, but if you were the 

Secretary of the Treasury, if I were the Secretary of the Treasury, 

and someone came in and said take a risk, what would you do? We 

have to set up arrangements under which that will not happen. We 

cannot just depend upon the will of the Secretary of the Treasury, 

because he will be under pressure and he will know or be told that 

terrible things will happen if he does not do the bailout. 

Senator VITTER. Right. Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. The only thing I would add—and I agree. I 

mean, the scenario you are describing is exactly what Dodd-Frank 

is designed to address. This would be not the trial run, the actual 

performance of Dodd-Frank liquidation authority. And I agree with 

my copanelists and with you, Senator Vitter, and Senators Brown 

and Warren, that I think the capital levels of banks today are so 

low that I can hardly imagine even if it were a one-off situation 

with one of these multitrillion-dollar banks, that we would see a 

24 

seamless operation of the orderly liquidation authority. And so this 

is also a great concern for me. 

Senator VITTER. Thank you. That is a perfect segue to my next 

question. As you know, in broad terms, I think the best response 

to avoid that is higher capital requirements for the megabanks. 

How do each of you feel about the current—now, that requirement has improved, moved in the right direction. I do not think it 

has moved enough. How do each of you feel about the current capital requirements for very large banks? 

Mr. TAYLOR. I think higher capital requirements are a way to get 

at this problem, and it may be the easiest way. But there are other 

ways, too, which I would just make a short pitch for. There is 

something in our Bankruptcy Code that could be amended and reformed to actually allow one of these institutions to go through 

bankruptcy and not cause a mess. There is a proposal called Chapter 14. One version came out of the House. Senator Toomey has 

been involved with another one here. I think it is really a good reform. It needs to be done anyway, and that would enable the Secretary of the Treasury, or whoever has to make this tough decision, 

to say, No, you know, staff, there is a chance this is going to happen, but we have got this other approach. We have got this bankruptcy thing that even a large institution can go through. That, I 

think, coupled with these capital requirement changes, could improve the situation a lot. 

Senator VITTER. And I am very open to that, and you certainly 

agree those are not mutually exclusive. They can work together. 

Dr. Meltzer. 

Mr. MELTZER. You certainly know my position on this, Senator 

Vitter. You know, it is really, as I see it, a fundamental economic 

question, and that is, who will have the incentive to do the right 

thing at the right time—the people whose money is at risk or the 

people who regulate them? The answer is the people whose money 

is at risk. 

Senator VITTER. Thank you. 

Dr. Kupiec. 

Mr. KUPIEC. The current system of capital regulation we have 

got ourselves into is incredibly complex. It is hard to even know 

what the requirements are for firms. In fact, most of the large 

firms’ capital requirement is being set by the Federal Reserve 

CCAR stress test, which is about to happen next week when the 

Fed—but we do not even really know objectively what the capital 

rules are. So while I am for higher capital, I am for much more 

simple, straightforward, objective measures of capital that regular 

people can understand, that you do not need a—— 

Senator VITTER. Also, I agree with that, too. 

Mr. KUPIEC. You do not need 100 Ph.D.s to read through the 

rules. 

Senator VITTER. I agree with that, too. 

Mr. Conti-Brown. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. I am not even sure a Ph.D. helps you read 

through some of the capital rules that we have. And so I think it 

is true that Basel III does make significant improvements, but tripling very little just still leaves you with little. And here I think 

substantial, dramatic increases to capital would go a very long way, 

25 

and the reason, of course, is very simple. Debt is the contagion in 

a financial crisis. When there is uncertainty about the value of assets and questions about who owes whom what money and what 

are the consequences to the financial health of the firms 

interlocked together, that is the financial crisis. When equity plays 

a much greater role, well, that is the very nature of the contract 

that shareholders have entered into. And so I think this is a simple 

and clear solution that is not mutually exclusive with the Bankruptcy Code, and I would flag one other issue on the Bankruptcy 

Code. I think there are other exceptions besides even a Chapter 14 

where assets and transactions have been written out of the Bankruptcy Code in derivatives and other kinds of financial markets 

that should be written back in so that we have a much clearer 

sense in the event of bankruptcy of who owes whom what and how 

they can participate in a more organized way without circumventing that and getting first in line just because your lobbyists before Congress were more effective than the other guys. 

Senator VITTER. Thank you all very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. Senator Donnelly. 

Senator DONNELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to 

thank you all for being here. 

I just want, Mr. Kupiec, to talk about another subject for a second. The International Association of Insurance Supervisors is attempting to develop capital standards for internationally active insurance groups. There is a concern that these proposed global capital standards could be adopted by Treasury and the Federal Reserve. And in my State, Indiana, we have lots of insurance companies governed by State regulation, and there is a concern. 

So what I am wondering is, as you look at this, do you believe 

that the process that is going on could endanger the State-regulated insurance system we have had for over a hundred years here? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes, I think this is a big issue, and it really needs 

to be looked into. The entire insurance regulatory system in the 

U.S. is based on State insurance regulation, and it has served us 

well for many, many years. The problems that arose in the crisis 

with the one insurer, AIG, were not in an insurance subsidiary. It 

happened in London in a special financial products group that was 

not considered insurance, and, in fact, that products group was actually subject to regulation by a bank regulator, the Office of Thrift 

Supervision. 

So the insurance system that exists is—now actually many in the 

industry feel threatened by the developments. The Federal Reserve 

now has powers over the insurance companies that are affiliated 

with depository institutions. They got this power under DoddFrank when they inherited insurance holding company and savings 

and loan holding company supervision from the Office of Thrift Supervision. And the Federal Reserve has testified that they have a 

very large examination program going into State insurance firms 

and examining them. And prior to this, these firms were under the 

examination authorities of the State supervisors. 

More than that, the Federal Reserve has been applying bank 

holding company capital rules to these groups, and so if they look 

at an insurer and they think of it through a bank capital prism, 

26 

they say that insurer’s capital is low. Well, in fact, the insurer 

meets State capital regulations which are defined for an entirely 

different purpose than bank capital regulations, and it is completely well capitalized. But the Fed will look at the group and say 

the capital is too low, apply the bank capital standards and require 

the group to raise capital. So insurers that have depositories as affiliates are finding real problems here. They are finding their capital constrained by the Federal Reserve, who was never intended 

to be their primary supervisor. 

Senator DONNELLY. Well, obviously, I am proud of our companies 

in our State, and we have found that our State regulation system 

has worked pretty well over the years. 

Dr. Meltzer, I want to ask you something. I am just curious. Let 

me paint a little picture for you. In 2009, Elkhart County, Indiana, 

20-percent-plus unemployment; Howard County, Indiana, 20-percent-plus unemployment. We build Chrysler transmissions in Howard County. We build recreational vehicles in Elkhart County. 

Today unemployment, 5.5 percent in both places. Do you think that 

was done in a bad way? 

Mr. MELTZER. No, I do not think that is—that is only good. I 

mean, I certainly think—— 

Senator DONNELLY. I have sat with the families when they did 

not have jobs and when they did have jobs. 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. 

Senator DONNELLY. And when I look up today from where we 

were at the time we had the collapse, it is a completely different 

world for these families. 

Mr. MELTZER. I agree that reducing the unemployment rate is a 

desirable thing in itself. What we are perhaps differing about is 

how much of that is due to the Fed’s QE policy and how much of 

it is due to other things that were going on, like a drop in oil 

prices. 

Senator DONNELLY. The oil prices did not get the transmission 

workers back to work. That was the assistance of the Federal Government. 

Mr. MELTZER. Good. But the Fed or the Federal Government—— 

Senator DONNELLY. Oh, I did not say the Fed. I am just saying, 

overall do you see that as something that actually benefited the 

country? 

Mr. MELTZER. Of course it is good. I mean, there is no question 

that low unemployment is desirable, and it should be and is an objective that we should try to meet all the time. 

Senator DONNELLY. OK. Let me ask you one other question, and 

this goes against the rule I learned as an attorney to never ask a 

question you do not know the answer to, and that would be: How 

do you define redistribution? I was curious when you were talking 

about that, and you said this redistribution is a problem. How do 

you define redistribution? 

Mr. MELTZER. When you tax high incomes in order to pay benefits to low incomes. 

Senator DONNELLY. What was the tax rate under Eisenhower? 

Mr. MELTZER. Oh, it was around 70 percent—— 

Senator DONNELLY. What is it today? 

27 

Mr. MELTZER. ——coming out of the war. But ask yourself the 

next question: How many people actually paid that tax? 

Senator DONNELLY. Enough to build the roads at the time. 

Mr. MELTZER. Not so much. 

Senator DONNELLY. They did pretty good, as far as I could tell. 

Mr. MELTZER. I do not believe that taxation is the major problem. I believe regulation is the major problem. Regulation is what 

is hurting our economy. Regulation is what is deterring business 

investment. You want to worry about—both for the near term and 

the longer term, you want to worry about the fact that we are not 

getting much investment, and much of the investment that we 

have been getting was in the oil and gas industry, which is now 

going temporarily to be reduced. Investment leads to productivity 

growth. Productivity growth leads to middle income going up. The 

best way that we can get the income distribution to collapse is to 

increase Part D growth by getting corporations to invest more. 

Senator DONNELLY. OK. I am out of time, so thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. Thank you. 

Dr. Meltzer, with respect to Dodd-Frank, you have written, and 

I will quote, ‘‘The Federal Reserve made the mistake of accepting 

responsibility for writing rules to increase financial stability. Some 

among them should know that the Federal Reserve had failed to 

require prudential policy in the years preceding the 2008 crisis.’’ 

Are you concerned that such failures could happen again? 

Mr. MELTZER. Absolutely. 

Chairman SHELBY. Should we reconsider some of the authorities 

granted regulators under Dodd-Frank that were intended to enhance or preserve financial stability? 

Mr. MELTZER. Yes. The key to the Brown-Vitter bill, which I 

have tried to work on with Senator Vitter, talked to Senator 

Brown, the key to that is to give the incentives to do the right 

thing, to be prudent in your choice of policies and actions, to do 

that on the people who have the most at stake, and that is the 

bankers and their principal stockholders. 

One of the things—I was glad that Senator Vitter brought up the 

problem of the concentration in banking because it is a problem. 

Here is a fact that was told to me by a banker friend. To meet one 

of the regulations, they hired temporarily 1,000 attorneys to do the 

thing. Now, what does a community bank do under those circumstances? What does a small or medium-sized bank do under 

those circumstances? It sells out to the big banks, or it goes out of 

business. It cannot afford to pay those costs. That is why we are 

getting concentration in the banking system that he talked about. 

The best way to get rid of that is to go and put the responsibility 

on the bankers. Take off the Dodd-Frank emphasis on having the 

Fed regulate them. Put the responsibility on them to regulate 

themselves. 

Chairman SHELBY. The effect of financial regulation on liquidity, 

financial regulatory reforms put in place, as you all know, have 

added thousands of pages of rules and regulations that have vastly 

increased compliance costs and liability for banks. 

On the one hand, the Fed’s easy money policies over the last few 

years were supposed to stimulate the economy. On the other, we 

28 

now have draconian rules, for example, on when and how banks 

can lend. 

I will point this question to you, Dr. Meltzer and Dr. Kupiec. Do 

you agree that the regulatory burden on financial institutions has 

limited the effectiveness of the Fed’s monetary policy actions? 

Mr. MELTZER. I am not sure. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Kupiec. 

Mr. KUPIEC. I think it has. There is an interesting phenomenon 

going on now where you find the Fed has created all this liquidity 

and deposits, and the largest institutions now are about to be 

charged negative interest rates to get the banks to hold their deposits, and this is a consequence actually of the new liquidity regulations that are going into place. The liquidity regulations require 

banks to treat large deposits as if they will run in a 30-day period 

under the liquidity coverage ratio, and the bank has to have investments to offset that run. Currently the investments pay almost 

nothing because of the zero interest rate policy, so you have the 

large banks basically posting these programs where they are telling 

people to take deposits out of the banking system. So we have this 

very strange new world where regulation that is meant to cause 

banks to be liquid is actually encouraging the banks to get deposits 

out of the banking system. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Kupiec, what are your views on the way 

the Federal Reserve is currently conducting stress tests? Do you 

have any recommendations to make the tests more efficient, transparent, and perhaps effective? 

Mr. KUPIEC. I think auditing the Federal Reserve stress test 

process would be a very good first step to understanding—for the 

Congress to understand whether they think it is a cost-effective 

means for regulation. 

In my own opinion, doing stress tests for a number of years and 

the head of the FDIC group that contributed to stress tests, both 

at the FDIC and the Federal Reserve System, and getting economists to their CCAR process, I can tell you these tests are very 

subjective. There is no right answer. It is really a game where you 

go in and you try to guess what the Federal Reserve thinks the 

losses are going to be under these scenarios, and you never know 

what the right answer is. It is almost impossible to plan long-run 

business planning in a situation where you have no idea what the 

rules of the game really are, and the regulator can change the rules 

of the game at the last minute. 

So I think these rules are very unproductive, and I think they 

give us a false sense of confidence, and they give a lot of discretion 

to the Federal Reserve Board and take it away from the banks. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Taylor, we have been using—or it has 

been used, Let us audit the Fed. A lot of people associate audit 

with just running the numbers and so forth. But what I took from 

some of your statements and others’ in this way, basically we ought 

to do great oversight of the Fed and their policies, not be a member 

of the Board of Governors, not to make that policy, but to do the 

proper oversight that Congress should have always done. Is that 

what we are saying here? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Very much so, Mr. Chairman. It is require that the 

Fed specify its own strategy in a way that you can hold them to, 

29 

and in hearings, in written statements, and, again, give them the 

flexibility they would need to implement that. 

Chairman SHELBY. Do you agree with that, Dr. Meltzer? 

Mr. MELTZER. Absolutely. I mean, there should be a law which 

says choose your strategy—very much like the House bill, choose 

your strategy, compare it to the Taylor rule or some other rule—— 

Chairman SHELBY. Sure. 

Mr. MELTZER. ——and we will monitor you. 

Mr. KUPIEC. I very much agree, and I think part of the transparency issue is understanding whether the decisions the Federal 

Reserve Board makes at the time it makes the decisions, do they 

actually perform the way the Board thinks they perform, or have 

some accountability, some measure of whether their judgments at 

the time are really working or not. If you find out over time they 

are not working, then you have to change something about the system to improve that, and I think that is the Congress’ job. 

Chairman SHELBY. So when we talk about audit, we are really 

talking about responsible oversight, aren’t we? 

Mr. KUPIEC. That is very much what we are talking about, not 

an audit but oversight. 

Chairman SHELBY. Thank you. 

Senator Brown. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate your distinction between auditing—and I remember what 

Chair Yellen held up, the book of the audits of the Federal Reserve—and oversight, and I think you are dead on. 

A couple of comments and a couple of last questions, Mr. ContiBrown. We talk about not just reforming the Fed. I think it is important to remember what Senator Vitter said, what Dr. Meltzer 

echoed, what Senator Warren said about the increasing economic 

power, if you will, of the regulated, the six largest banks, the eight 

largest banks, wherever you want to start the cutoff there, do the 

cutoff, and not just the economic power that six banks having 65 

percent—their assets being 65 percent of GDP, but the political 

power that they hold with agencies, with regulators, with Congress, 

all up and down. 

The second thing I thought of during this hearing—and it has 

really sparked interest in my office and among my staff and among 

the Banking Committee staff, Graham and Laura particularly, is 

sort of the structure of the Fed and the 12 regional Presidents and 

the 12 districts, how each of the Class A—each of the three Class 

A Directors are drawn from the banks, each of the Class B Directors are chosen by the banks, and each of the Class C Directors are 

chosen we do not really quite know how, ultimately by the Fed, but 

we do not know where names are submitted, and the statute does 

not seem to speak to this at all clearly, and it raises a lot of questions about sort of the most—the potential of regulatory capture 

and the fact—and I think the question that I asked all of you that 

you all answered fairly well about, you know, should the Fed be interested in income inequality, and when the nine—typically, the 

nine Class A, B, and C Directors in each of the Fed regions, in each 

of the Fed districts, who have hired—six of whom have hired the 

Fed Presidents in those district, how they are not exactly a crossVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
30 

section of America in their income and their backgrounds and their 

education levels, perhaps in their interests also. 

But let me talk for a moment about the Taylor rule and ask you, 

Mr. Conti-Brown, some thoughts. Dr. Simon Johnson at a hearing 

in the House some months ago made clear there is a significant difference between central banks being transparent about their objectives and actions for monetary policy and Congress specifying in 

detail a default rule for determining monetary policy for a central 

bank. Dr. Taylor 20 years authored an article that we know about 

titled, ‘‘Discretion Versus Policy Rules and Practice’’. He wrote, ‘‘A 

policy rule can be implemented and operated more informally by 

policymakers who recognize the general instrument responses that 

underlie a policy rule, but who also recognize that operating the 

rule requires judgment and can be done by computer. A policy rule 

need not necessarily mean either a fixed setting for the policy instruments or a mechanical formula.’’ 

Mr. Conti-Brown, is the Fed transparent about its objectives and 

actions for monetary policy? And should they, in fact, follow a fixed 

monetary policy rule? 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. So recognizing that I am a legal scholar and 

a historian, not an economist, let me answer that question, and 

that is actually not so much a qualifier, but gives insight into why 

I am not in favor of the House bill that is sometimes called ‘‘the 

Taylor rule bill’’ or the ‘‘policy rule bill,’’ and the reason is that law 

can be very sticky. So Professor Taylor has been talking about how 

we just need—you know, define your rule, and if it deviates from 

the Taylor rule or whatever rule is specified by the House, then explain it. And in a perfect world where people come to these questions rationally, are looking at the same data and information, this 

becomes a very technocratic or technical evaluation. You can imagine that there would be built in a great deal of consensus about 

why a rule that was written in statute should be deviated from. 

Now, as an expert in the Federal Reserve Act, I can tell you 

there are so many provisions that were written subject to political 

compromises of decades long past but still exert a great deal of 

pressure over the organization of our central bank. So the thing 

that I fear about a statutory policy rule is that it would just get 

stuck in statutory inertia and make it very difficult to deviate, even 

if there is broad consensus ideologically among economists and others that there should be that deviation. And, indeed, the periods 

historically that Professors Taylor and Meltzer have pointed to as 

being eras when there have been really successful outcomes, those 

were policy rules adopted internally by the Fed. The Fed today has 

also adopted policy rules and is very clear about what their outcomes and targets are at a time—more clear than they were, in 

fact, during that period that is pointed to as really the bastion of 

policy rules. 

So that is what gives me great pause about putting policy rules 

into the Federal Reserve Act, is the unintended consequences that 

future generations will be dealing with a political moment that we 

are confronting today, where, frankly, there is not even consensus 

among economists as to the virtues of this action for today’s problems, let alone tomorrow’s. 

31 

Senator BROWN. Thank you. Let me for a moment ask you to discuss sort of the difference between transparency and clarity. No 

one has accused the Fed, at least in my lifetime, of always being 

clear in its public statements. President Fisher of the Dallas Fed 

delivered a speech and said, ‘‘In this era of social media and uber 

transparency, we all at the Fed need to learn to speak English 

rather than Fed-speak.’’ It seems to me it would not take legislation. It would be more effective than Audit the Fed. 

Give us briefly your thoughts on how the Feds could do more to 

change how they speak to the American public. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. Absolutely, I think that that emphasis on 

clarity is extremely important. Chairman Greenspan very famously 

said in 1987, since he became Fed Chairman, he learned to ‘‘mumble with great incoherence,’’ and that was seen as a bastion of an 

old guard rule that central bankers never defend, never explain. 

That is changing, and it is continuing to change. The Fed can do 

more, by speaking in English, issuing FOMC statements that have 

clarity around them, having a Web site that is easy to navigate, 

which the Fed has done and markedly improved, having a more liberal FOIA policy where they let go of some of their documents. As 

a scholar, I have had some run-ins with the Fed where they have 

held onto things that they should not have held onto, other things 

they released that they should, and it is very healthy. So I think 

the Fed is paying a great deal of attention to its public-facing interactions. It is doing more, and Members of Congress should encourage it through hearings and through our mechanisms to say that 

they should stop speaking in too technical language. 

The last point I would make on this, here is why the diversity 

on the FOMC and Board of Governors is so essential, and diversity 

here I mean in an intellectual and methodological approach. Academic economists have now dominated the FOMC, the Reserve 

Bank Presidents on the Board of Governors, and I think economists, of course, have a natural interest in the functions of the 

macro economy and the functions of central banks. But when they 

all gather together, they start to speak a language that is not necessarily accessible to the American people because the American 

people do not all have Ph.D.s in economics. 

Having more people who are coming from legal backgrounds, 

banking backgrounds, consumer backgrounds, labor backgrounds, 

historians, others, to participate in not only the formulation of policy but also its explanation to others would go a very long way at 

reaching the clarity that you are talking about, Senator Brown. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you. And the last question—and Dr. 

Meltzer told us, I thought very aptly, gave his description of regulatory capture with some thoughts on what to do. Give me yours. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. So regulatory capture is sometimes defined as 

when the regulated get to dictate the terms to the regulators it is 

a problem all throughout our economy, not just in the financial sector. But it is hardwired into the Federal Reserve Act. The mechanisms that you described where it is not just Class B and C Directors who choose the Presidents. Class A Directors are still, just as 

you said, in the selection of the Directors, are they participating in 

those conversations? Are they putting forward names, even if they 

do not formally vote? We do not know. But the very idea that bankVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
32 

ers are selecting their regulators, not through Congress but directly, by the exercise of a vote, should give us all pause and ask 

questions about how could the Reserve Bank Presidents do anything but dance with the one that ‘‘brung’’ them. This is the problem that I see, and I think addressing those governance problems 

at the Reserve Banks would go a very long way at increasing public 

accountability, congressional oversight of the appointment personnel level in a very healthy way, and indeed could help facilitate 

rules-based monetary policy. If we want to see a Taylor rule at the 

Fed, then we should appoint Professor Taylor to be at the Fed, and 

having that kind of focus on appointment personnel—— 

Chairman SHELBY. That would probably be a great idea. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman SHELBY. He has been mentioned. Maybe he will be. 

Mr. CONTI-BROWN. I think that that would be vastly superior to 

writing the Taylor rule into the Federal Reserve Act, is focusing on 

the appointment and governance structure of the Fed instead of 

dictating policies. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. Dr. Taylor, your name has been mentioned 

here several times by me and others and by Mr. Conti-Brown, and 

the Taylor rule. Do you want to respond to any of that? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Just briefly. There is nothing in the House bill 

where a rule would be written into statute, as I hear Mr. ContiBrown saying. This is the Fed’s decision to choose its strategy and 

its rule. And as Allan Meltzer indicated, during certain periods it 

has done that quite well. In other periods it has not. 

I think part of the accountability would be that they would say 

what they are doing and when they are off and when they are on, 

and there could be a good discussion of that. It seems to me it is 

so integral to public policy. 

I think the idea that the Fed could just do it on its own—in other 

words, the Chair could come up and just describe the strategy and 

without any legal change—it is conceivable. But I think the partnership, if you like, the accountability, would benefit if it was actually part of the law. Many people have taken this suggestion, many 

people at the Fed said, well, we can do that anyway. But I think 

they are not. And so this would be, I think, an encouragement for 

them. 

It is hard for me to understand why people object to this. Most 

of the objections—and, admittedly, I might not be hearing them 

properly. But most of the objections seem to be misinterpreting 

what the law, what the proposal, what the bill is all about. And 

just if I go back to Senator Brown’s question of Mr. Conti-Brown, 

there is a distinction between setting a goal, like 2-percent inflation, and setting your strategy to get to the goal. There is a difference. That is in some sense why I quoted from Janet Yellen. 

This is simply just meant to be someone who has thought about 

this for many years, and carefully. She said a rule could help the 

Federal Reserve communicate to the public the rationale behind its 

moves—that is, instrument moves—and how those moves are consistent with the objectives, like 2-percent inflation. 

So there is a great deal of value to having a dialog like that. It 

is more than we have now. And I think going back to the experiVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
33 

ence, we have had periods where, as Allan Meltzer indicated, the 

policy has been more strategic, rule-like, less reacting to individual 

things, more understandable, more predictable, and the economy 

has worked better. And then there are these other periods, unfortunately—and I wish I could have been part of the answer to that 

20-percent unemployment in Indiana. That just did not magically 

happen. That 20 percent was also due to public policy, going down 

to 5. But do not forget that we are trying to avoid those 20-percent 

phenomena. It is terrible. 

And so, sincerely, from looking at the experience, the way Government works, my own experience in Government, it seems to me 

that there is a lot of ration off this. It does not need to be partisan. 

There is a lot of people who understood this and study it. So I urge 

you to continue talking about it, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SHELBY. I thank the panel. We will continue our hearings regarding the Fed and other regulatory agencies. Thank you 

very much. 

[Whereupon, at 4:25 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

[Prepared statements, responses to written questions, and additional material supplied for the record follow:] 

34 

John Brian Taylor is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at Stanford University’s Hoover 

Institution. 1For additional background on this general type of reform see John B. Taylor, ‘‘Legislating 

a Rule for Monetary Policy’’, The Cato Journal, 31 (3), Fall, 407–415, 2011. 2 ‘‘The Importance of Rules-Based Policy in Practice’’, in Frameworks for Central Banking in 

the Next Century, Michael D. Bordo, William Dupor, and John B. Taylor (Eds.), A Special Issue 

on the Occasion of the Centennial of the Founding of the Federal Reserve, Journal of Economic 

Dynamics and Control, Volume 49, December 2014. 3 Janet L. Yellen, ‘‘Monetary Policy: Goals and Strategy’’, Remarks to the National Association 

of Business Economics, Washington, DC, March 13, 1996. 4For a summary of the research see John B. Taylor and John C. Williams ‘‘Simple and Robust 

Rules for Monetary Policy’’, in Benjamin Friedman and Michael Woodford (Eds.), Handbook of 

Monetary Economics, Elsevier, 2011, 829–859. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN B. TAYLOR 

MARY AND ROBERT RAYMOND PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

MARCH 3, 2015 

Chairman Shelby, Ranking Member Brown, and other Members of the Committee, 

thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing on ‘‘Federal Reserve Accountability and Reform’’. 

In my opening remarks I would like to focus on a particular reform that would 

improve the accountability and transparency of monetary policy and lead to better 

economic performance. The reform would simply require the Fed to describe its 

strategy for monetary policy. It is a reform about which both Chairman Shelby and 

Chairman Jeb Hensarling of the House Financial Services Committee asked Fed 

Chair Janet Yellen in their opening questions at the Congressional hearings last 

week. It has attracted a lot of attention and has led to discussion and debate in the 

media, in the markets, and among economists. 

The prime example of such a reform is a bill which passed out of the House Financial Services Committee as Section 2 of HR 5018 last year. 1 This bill would require that the Fed ‘‘describe the strategy or rule of the Federal Open Market Committee for the systematic quantitative adjustment’’ of its policy instruments. It 

would be the Fed’s job to choose the strategy and how to describe it. The Fed could 

change its strategy or deviate from it if circumstances called for a change, but the 

Fed would have to explain why. 

In considering the merits of such a reform, I think it is important to emphasize 

the word ‘‘strategy’’ in the bill. Though monetary economists often use the word 

‘‘rule’’ rather than strategy, the term rule can sometimes be intimidating if one 

imagines that a rules-based strategy must be purely mechanical, contrary to what 

I and others have argued for many years. The United States Congress through the 

Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee is in a 

good position—and in a unique position in our Government—to oversee monetary 

policy in a strategic rather than a tactical sense. The most effective way to exercise 

this oversight is to require that the Federal Reserve describe its strategy publicly 

as the House bill does. 

Experienced public officials know the importance of having a strategy and the 

close connection between a strategy and a rules-based process. One of the most experienced, George Shultz, put it this way, and I quote 2 ‘‘Let me explain why I think 

it is important, based on my own experience, to have a rules-based monetary policy. 

First of all, if you have policy rule, like a Taylor Rule, you have a strategy, which 

is sort of what it amounts to . . . And at least as I have observed from policy decisions over the years in various fields, if you have a strategy, you get somewhere. 

If you don’t have a strategy, you are just a tactician at large and it doesn’t add up. 

So a strategy is a key element in getting somewhere.’’ 

Fed Chair Janet Yellen made similar observations when she served on the Federal Reserve Board in the 1990s. In ‘‘Monetary Policy: Goals and Strategy’’ she explained that 3 ‘‘The existence of policy tradeoffs requires a strategy for managing 

them,’’ and she described a policy rule (the Taylor rule) pointing out ‘‘several desirable features’’ it has ‘‘as a general strategy for conducting monetary policy.’’ She also 

stated that ‘‘the framework of a Taylor-type rule could help the Federal Reserve 

communicate to the public the rationale behind policy moves, and how those moves 

are consistent with its objectives.’’ 

In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last summer I described how experience and research by many people over many years has shown 

that a rules-based monetary strategy leads to good economic performance. 4 This 

view is based on historical and statistical evidence. During periods when policy is 

more rules-based as in much of the 1980s, 1990s, the economy has performed well. 

35 

5Frameworks for Central Banking in the Next Century, Michael D. Bordo, William Dupor, and 

John B. Taylor (Eds.), A Special Issue on the Occasion of the Centennial of the Founding of 

the Federal Reserve, Journal of Economics Dynamics and Control, Volume 49, December 2014. 6Michael Belongia and Peter Ireland, ‘‘Don’t Audit the Fed, Restructure It’’, e21 February 19, 

2015. 7 Janet Yellen, ‘‘The Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy’’, Money Marketeers, New York, 

New York, April 11, 2012. 8 Eric Engen, Thomas Laubach, and David Reifschneider, ‘‘The Macroeconomic Effects of the 

Federal Reserve’s Unconventional Monetary Policies’’, January 14, 2015. 

During periods such as the 1970s and the past decade when policy has been more 

discretionary, economic performance has been poor. The shifts in policy preceded the 

shifts in economic performance, which indicates that policy shifts cause the changes 

in performance. 

In a compendium published just last December to mark the Centennial of the 

Federal Reserve, Michael Bordo, Richard Clarida, John Cochrane, Marvin 

Goodfriend, Jeffrey Lacker, Allan Meltzer, Lee Ohanian, David Papell, Charles 

Plosser, and William Poole joined George Shultz in writing about the advantages 

of such a policy strategy. 5 Most also agreed that during the past decade the Fed 

has either moved away from a rules-based strategy or has not been clear about what 

the strategy is. As stated last week by monetary economists Michael Belongia and 

Peter Ireland 6 ‘‘For all the talk about ‘transparency,’ . . . the process—or rule—by 

which the FOMC intends to defend its 2-percent inflation target remains unknown.’’ 

Hearings specifically about this reform and other hearings such as those with 

Chair Yellen last week have been useful for getting input and finding the best way 

forward. But concerns and misunderstandings persist. For example, in answering 

questions from Chairman Shelby last week, Fed Chair Yellen stated that ‘‘I am not 

a proponent of chaining the Federal Open Market Committee in its decision making 

to any rule whatsoever.’’ And the next day she repeated that view to Chairman Hensarling, saying ‘‘I don’t believe that the Fed should chain itself to any mechanical 

rule.’’ And in both hearings she quoted me saying that the Fed should not follow 

a mechanical rule. But the House monetary strategy bill, or similar proposals, would 

not chain the Fed to any rule. First, the Fed would choose and describe its own 

strategy, and it need not be a mechanical rule. Second, the Fed could change the 

strategy if the world changed, or it could deviate from the strategy in a crisis; so 

it would not be ‘‘chained.’’ The Fed would have to report the reasons for the changes 

or departures, but, as in the example of departing from the policy rule during the 

stock market break in 1987, which Chair Yellen referred to, it would not be difficult 

to explain such adjustments. 

Another concern has been raised by those who warn that by publicly describing 

its policy strategy, the Fed would lose independence. In my view, based on my own 

experience in Government, the opposite is more likely. A clear public strategy helps 

prevent policymakers from bending to pressure. Moreover, de jure central bank 

independence alone has not prevented departures from a rules-based strategy. De 

jure central bank independence has been virtually unchanged in the past 50 years, 

yet policymakers have varied their adherence to rules-based policy. These variations 

demonstrate the need for legislation requiring the Fed to set and clarify its strategy 

for its policy instruments. 

Some have expressed concern that a rules-based strategy would be too rigid. But 

the reform provides flexibility. It would allow the Fed to serve as lender of last resort or take appropriate actions in the event of a crisis. A policy strategy or rule 

does not require that any instrument of policy be fixed, but rather that it flexibly 

adjusts in a systematic and predictable way to economic developments. Moreover, 

as I indicated, the reform allows the Fed to change its rule or deviate from it. 

Another concern is expressed by those who claim that the House monetary strategy bill would require the Fed to follow the Taylor Rule; but this is not the case. 

The bill does require the Fed to describe how its strategy or rule might differ from 

a ‘‘reference rule,’’ which happens to be the Taylor rule. However, describing the difference between a particular policy rule and this reference rule is a natural and routine task for the Fed. In fact, many at the Fed already make such comparisons including Fed Chair Yellen; 7 another recent example is the Fed staff paper that 

makes extensive use of the rule to measure the impact of the Fed’s unconventional 

policies. 8

It is important to point out that there is precedent for this type of Congressional 

oversight. Previous legislation, which appeared in the Federal Reserve Act from 

1977 to 2000, required reporting of the ranges of the monetary aggregates. The legislation did not specify exactly what the numerical settings of these ranges should 

be, but the greater focus on the money and credit ranges were helpful in the disinflation efforts of the 1980s. When the requirement for reporting ranges for the 

36 

1More detail on this period and other examples of lack of independence that I cite, and some 

that I don’t cite, come from my Federal Reserve history. 

monetary aggregates were removed from the law in 2000, nothing was put in its 

place. A legislative void was thus created concerning reporting requirements and accountability. In many ways reform is needed simply to fill that void. 

In my view the Congress and this Committee now have an opportunity to move 

forward on such a reform in a nonpartisan way with constructive input from the 

Fed. The result would be a more effective monetary policy based on a strategy to 

achieve the goals of a better performing economy which we all share. I would be 

happy to answer any questions you may have about this reform or others. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALLAN H. MELTZER 

THE ALLAN H. MELTZER UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, TEPPER

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

MARCH 3, 2015 

What does ‘‘independent’’ mean when the Federal Reserve is called an independent agency? The question is not one that the Federal Reserve or others try to 

answer, so we must look at what it does to supplement its few efforts to define independence. 

The answer is mixed. Any agency that can quadruple the size of its balance sheet 

without oversight over 4 or 5 years, as the Fed has just done, has considerable freedom or independence. Yet, many of the increased services, more than 40 percent, 

went to finance the outsized budget deficits during the period. Independent central 

banks do not finance budget deficits. 

In fact, the original Federal Reserve Act in 1913, did not permit any Federal Reserve support of the Treasury. For the founders, an independent central bank followed a gold standard rule and also a rule that prohibited financing the Treasury 

and the budget. Those two rules supported an independent Federal Reserve during 

the 1920s. After surrendering independence to finance World War I and accepting 

control by the Treasury and administration in the early postwar, the Federal Reserve restored its independence by restoring the gold exchange standard. That 

standard was a weaker type of gold standard that became an operating rule. The 

Fed worked to expand the gold exchange standard internationally. The U.S. did not 

leave the standard until 1934, but it did not monetize gold inflows in 1930–32, a 

mistake but made independently. 

The prohibition against financing the Treasury did not last long. By 1923, the Reserve Banks, subject to Board approval, bought and sold Treasury issues to change 

bank reserves. Once open market operations became the principal means of implementing monetary policy, the Federal Reserve could buy new Treasury issues, not 

directly from Treasury, but in the market. 

Legally the Federal Reserve remained an independent agency. Once the two rules 

were no longer binding, independence lost much of its meaning. As Milton Friedman 

claimed (Friedman, 1959), and Thomas Cargill recently documented (Cargill, 2014), 

it is a rule that restricts Federal Reserve actions. And it is the decision to follow 

a rule that maintains central bank independence. 

In the 1930s, once the two original rules no longer affected Federal Reserve decisions, the Treasury demanded monetary actions. Secretary Morgenthau wanted low 

interest rates to finance budget deficits. He threatened to use the profit from revaluing the gold stock to purchase debt, if the Federal Reserve allowed interest rates 

to rise. Legal independence gave no protection. 1

As is well-known, the Federal Reserve agreed to hold interest rates fixed to finance World War II debt. The Federal Reserve sacrificed its independence. The Korean War is the only war in which the Federal Government ran a budget surplus 

in the war years 1951–52. 

The Federal Reserve used concern about Korean wartime inflation to end its policy of pegging rates inherited from World War II. From the end of the war in 1945 

to March 1951, the prevailing Federal Reserve position was that it could not regain 

independence because it lacked political strength. The Federal Reserve acted only 

after several U.S. senators led by Senator Paul Douglas insisted on an end to the 

wartime pegging policy. The Fed’s independence remained restricted by its agreement to maintain an ‘‘even keel’’ when the Treasury issued debt, so independence 

of Treasury was not complete. Even keel required the Federal Reserve to support 

Treasury issues by purchasing treasuries if a treasury issue was mispriced. The Fed 

37 

continued even keel interventions until the 1970s when the Treasury finally decided 

to auction its bonds and notes. 

A much greater restriction on independence after 1951 was Chairman Martin’s 

definition of independence, borrowed from an earlier statement by Alan Sproul of 

the New York bank. This is the only explicit definition offered by officials. Martin 

said that the Fed was independent within the Government, not independent of the 

Government. 

Martin explained the distinction on several occasions. Independence within Government turned out to have little true independence. Martin explained that if Congress passes and the president signs a budget that requires substantial deficit finance, the Federal Reserve has the obligation to help finance the budget. A consequence of this policy was that inflation remained lower than the 1.4 percent average of consumer price inflation in the 1950s, when President Eisenhower maintained small deficits or surpluses except in the recession year, 1958. In the years 

of President Johnson’s larger Federal budget deficits, 1965–69, the average inflation 

(CPI) rate rose to 3.5 percent and was rising at a 5.5 percent rate when Martin retired. 

Arthur Burns replaced Martin. Burns was a frequent visitor at the White House 

and considered himself a friend and confident of President Nixon. During his term 

as chairman, cpi inflation averaged 6.6 percent and reached as high as 11 percent 

in 1974. Burns was present with Administration officials when President Nixon 

adopted price and wage controls in 1971. As part of the controls program, Burns 

chaired the Committee on Interest and Dividends. He cannot be regarded as independent during President Nixon’s terms. 

The Carter administration did not reappoint Burns to a third 4-year term as 

chairman because he did not share information with them. This was a more independent Burns. His replacement was a businessman who had worked in the Carter 

presidential campaign and served on a regional Federal Reserve Bank board. The 

choice shows no evidence of a desire for an independent monetary policy. 

When President Carter moved William Miller to Treasury Secretary, he appointed 

Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chairman. Volcker was a relatively independent 

chairman committed to a policy of reducing inflation. President Carter shared his 

aim. He did not share Volcker’s belief that the Federal Reserve had to reduce money 

growth to lower inflation. President Carter under pressure from Congressional 

members of his own party, chose to have the Federal Reserve impose credit controls. 

Volcker participated in the Administration discussions and agreed to implement the 

control program. This is a breach in his independence. 

The Federal Reserve credit control program was rather benign. The public’s reaction much less so. A widespread surge of popular support for lower inflation brought 

a large decline in spending and quarterly GNP. Although use of credit cards was 

not restricted, thousands mailed their credit cards to the White House and the Fed. 

The response to credit controls was so strong that the open market committee 

shifted to expansive policy in the summer of 1980. Credit controls ended. 

In the fall of 1980, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and renewed antiinflation policy. President Carter accepted the Fed’s actions. He declined to act despite the urgings of his advisers who warned that high unemployment and high interest rates would hurt his campaign for reelection. Volcker was not pressed to 

lower interest rates. 

Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election. His campaign promised to reduce inflation. 

Despite urgings from the so-called supply-side economists at the Treasury, President 

Reagan did not pressure the Federal Reserve. The president accepted the highest 

unemployment rate of the postwar years, 10.8 percent, and with it the loss of many 

Republican seats in the fall 1982 election. 

Volcker called himself a ‘‘practical monetarist.’’ He explained repeatedly what I 

call the anti-Phillips curve foundation of his strategy. He often told Congress and 

the public that the way to reduce the unemployment rate was to lower expected inflation. Despite long term interest rates of 5 to 7 percent, the economy recovered 

strongly in 1983 and 1984. Inflation remained low most years after 1984. 

Alan Greenspan replaced Volcker in 1986. Greenspan further lowered the inflation rate. He was also a relatively independent chairman who resisted open criticism from the Administration of his anti-inflation policy during the 1992 election 

year. 

Greenspan made a radical departure from the discretionary policy followed by 

many of his predecessors. From 1986 to about 2002, he let the Fed more or less follow a Taylor rule. This produced a long period of growth, short and mild recessions, 

accompanied by low inflation. After the fact, the period was called ‘‘the great moderation’’ because of the combination of relatively stable growth, low inflation, and 

short, mild recessions. 

38 

2 Bagehot criticized the Bank of England for not publicly announcing its lender-of-last-resort 

policy. In its entire history, the Federal Reserve has never announced a crisis policy. By announcing its policy, the Federal Reserve would encourage some banks to act prudently. For more 

detail on Federal Reserve lender-of-last-resort policy see Goodfriend (2012, 2013) where he relates the Federal Reserve failure to the incentives induced by its governance structure. See also 

Bordo (2014) at this conference. 

By following a rule, the Greenspan Fed produced the longest period of stable 

growth and low inflation in Federal Reserve history. Greenspan was able to maintain Federal Reserve independence because his policy maintained popular support. 

Following a rule sustained a rule sustained independence. 

There are many explanations of the so-called great moderation. I believe the main 

reason is reliance on the Taylor rule to guide policy. Following that rule induces policymakers to avoid responding to noisy monthly and quarterly data. By following a 

Phillips Curve, FOMC actions increase variability. The Fed responds to the unemployment rate and ignores inflation until inflation rises. Then it ignores unemployment until unemployment rises. By approximately following a Taylor rule, the Federal Reserve responded to both unemployment and inflation. That gave more of a 

medium-term focus to their actions and avoided shifting from one goal in the dual 

mandate to the other. 

Unfortunately, the Greenspan Federal Reserve reverted to earlier procedures after 

2003. And when Ben Bernanke became chairman in 2006, the Fed restored its policy of responding to noisy, frequently revised monthly reports on unemployment. 

The Bernanke Fed made the mistake of bailing out a failed Bear Stearns early 

in 2008. This contributed to the belief that the Fed would support failing financial 

firms. By encouraging this belief and doing little to force banks to strengthen their 

balance sheets and increase equity reserves, the Fed encouraged the financial system to be unprepared for the crisis that followed failure of Lehman Brothers in October 2008. Bankers interpreted Federal Reserve policy statements as an indication 

that it would bail out large banks. Lehman’s failure came when the financial system 

was undercapitalized. Fear of additional failures—widespread collapse of the payments system—was met by massive Federal Reserve action including a bailout of 

a major insurance company. 

The Treasury and the Federal Reserve worked together to restore confidence and 

solvency. There was no thought of independence. In a major crisis independence 

vanishes. This was true of the Bank of England under the traditional gold standard, 

and it remains true. 

Preventing systemic collapse avoided the mistakes of 1929–32. Although some at 

the Fed claimed to follow Bagehot’s (1873) rule, that is only partly true. The Fed 

lent freely to all legitimate borrowers, but it did not charge a penalty rate to limit 

lending to those at risk. Most importantly, in its 100 year history it never announced a rule for the lender of last resort. Bagehot understood that announcing 

the crisis rule encouraged banks to hold short-term paper eligible for discount. 2

Following its successful policy of preventing financial collapse, the Federal Reserve pursued the most expansive policy in its history. Idle excess reserves of banks 

rose from less than $800 billion to more than $2.5 trillion. Currently, on its projected path, idle reserves will reach $3 trillion in 2014. 

This policy finances massive Government budget deficits at very low interest 

rates. This is the very opposite of what an independent central bank does. I do not 

know of any example, anywhere, in which base money creation to finance large 

budget deficits avoided higher inflation. The Federal Reserve has not revealed a 

credible policy that will prevent future inflation. 

Market participants credit the Federal Reserve with ability to prevent inflation. 

That seems to neglect much previous history. Perhaps market expectations are encouraged by the low inflation to date. That ignores the possible tsunami of idle reserves that spill over the domestic and international economy. 

What We Should Learn 

In its first 100 years, the cpi inflation rate rose from 1 percent in 1914 to 18 percent during World War I, then fell to -10.5 percent in 1926. Under the gold exchange 

rule from 1923 to 1929 inflation remained relatively low and stable, never exceeding 

2.3 percent in 1925. 

During the 1930s, inflation fell to -9.9 percent in 1932 and rose to 3.6 percent during the inflation scare of the mid-1930s. Price and wage controls held down reported 

inflation rates during World War II. Nevertheless, cpi inflation reached 10.9 percent 

in 1942 and 14.1 percent in 1947 after the Congress removed controls. 

39 

By the late 1960s and the 1970s, inflation rose as the Federal Reserve helped to 

finance Federal budget deficits. That ended with the Volcker disinflation and the 

Greenspan policy. 

Table 1 shows a rough measure of recent Federal Reserve independence, the portion of a relatively large budget deficit financed by issuing base money. This measure is not useful for periods like the 1950s, when the budget deficit was small in 

most years and budget surpluses were frequent. 

The chart shows the large difference between the Volcker years and the Bernanke 

years. President Obama’s deficits increased massively, and the Federal Reserve financed a much larger share. The inflation consequences are currently postponed because banks hold most of the reserves idle. Independent central banks behave like 

the Volcker Fed, not like the Bernanke Fed. 

The Bernanke Federal Reserve never claimed to hold interest rates low to help 

the Treasury and it did not repeat Chairman Martin’s definition of independence. 

It defended its policy as an effort to lower the unemployment rate. With trillions 

of idle reserves on bank balance sheets and additional trillions of money and shortterm securities on corporate balance sheets, it did not explain what it thought additional reserves could achieve that could not be achieved by the banks and corporations. This seems an elementary error, but an error nonetheless. I believe it is a 

political decision made by a politicized and therefore nonindependent Federal Reserve. 

A main lesson of this trip through history is that following a rule or quasi-rule 

in 1923–28 and 1986–2002 produced two of the best periods in Federal Reserve history. The lesson I draw, as Friedman (1959) taught us, following a rule contributes 

to independence by producing better outcomes, but claiming independence does not. 

No rule will work perfectly in all circumstances. The classical gold standard rule 

required suspensions during crises. Following a Taylor rule produced better than average results. Congress, under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, should require the Federal Reserve to follow a specific Taylor rule with opportunity to deviate 

based on an announced objective. 

The Federal Reserve is an agent of Congress. Congress holds a hearing twice a 

year to fulfill its oversight requirement. Federal Reserve chairmen are able to avoid 

serious oversight because they are able to talk around their mistakes. A rule would 

increase control by Congressional oversight committees. 

A Taylor rule can improve monetary policy and economic performance. It achieves 

greater policy independence also. It should be supplemented by a pre-announced 

rule for its service as lender of last resort. 

40 

Bibliography 

Bagehot, Walter, (1873/1962). Lombard Street. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. 

Bordo, Michael, (2014). ‘‘Rules for a Lender of Last Resort: An Historical Perspective’’. Xeroxed, Rutgers University, April. 

Friedman, Milton, (1959). A Program for Monetary Stability. New York: Fordham 

University Press. 

Cargill, Thomas, (2014). ‘‘Independence No Substitute for Rules Board Policy’’, Central Banking, 24 (February), 3, 9–46. 

Goodfriend, Marvin, (2012). ‘‘The Elusive Promise of Independent Central Banking’’. 

Money and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, November, 39–53. 

Goodfriend, Marvin, (2013). ‘‘Lessons Learned From a Century of Federal Reserve 

Lending’’. Testimony Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, House Committee on Financial Services, September 28. 

41 

42 

43 

44 

45 

46 

47 

48 

49 

50 

51 

52 

53 

54 

55 

56 

57 

58 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL H. KUPIEC 

RESIDENT SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

MARCH 3, 2015 

Chairman Shelby, Ranking Member Brown, and distinguished Members of the 

Committee, thank you for convening today’s hearing on Federal Reserve Accountability and for inviting me to testify. I am a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, but this testimony represents my personal views. My research is focused on banking, regulation, and financial stability. I have prior experience working on banking and financial policy issues at the Federal Reserve Board, the IMF 

and, in the most recent past, for 10 years as Director of the FDIC Center of Financial Research where I served a 3-year term as chairman of the Research Task Force 

of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. It is an honor for me to be able 

to testify before the Committee today. 

I will begin with a high-level summary of my testimony: 

• The Federal Reserve was created by and enjoys duties and powers delimited by 

laws passed by Congress. Congress retains the legal right and social responsibility to amend the Federal Reserve Act and related legislation when such 

amendments are judged to be in the national interest. To exercise this duty, the 

Congress must have the right to assess the performance of existing Federal Reserve powers and responsibilities. 

• New legislation is required should Congress decide to assess the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy performance using the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Federal Banking Agency Audit Act of 1978 restricts the GAO 

from evaluating Federal Reserve activities related to the Fed’s monetary policy 

functions. 

• No new legislation is required to use the GAO to assess many other Federal 

Reserve activities and process including the expanded regulatory powers granted to the Federal Reserve and the Board of Governors by the Dodd-Frank Act. 

• Many Federal Reserve regulatory initiatives related to their Dodd-Frank expanded powers merit closer Congressional oversight. In this testimony, I will 

limit my discussion to three areas that have especially important ramifications 

for the safety and vitality of the entire U.S. financial system: 

• The Congress should exercise closer oversight over the Federal Reserve’s ongoing interactions with international standard-setting bodies like the Financial Stability Board, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, 

and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. 

• Congresses should instruct the GAO to assess the costs, benefits, and processes associated with the recurring Board of Governors stress tests mandated 

by Section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act. These stress tests are very resourceintensive, both for banks and for the banking regulators, and there is little 

evidence that they are a cost-effective and objective means for regulating individual financial institutions. 

• Congress should assess potential conflicts that may be developing between 

the Federal Reserve’s Dodd-Frank expanded powers over the domestic insurance industry and State insurance regulations. There are indications that 

new Federal Reserve examination and capital policies for insurers affiliated 

with a depository institution may be generating serious conflicts with existing 

State insurance supervision and regulation, contrary to the intent of the 

Dodd-Frank Act. 

Federal Reserve Independence and Calls To ‘‘Audit the Fed’’ 

The Federal Reserve was created by and enjoys duties and powers delimited by 

laws passed by Congress. Congress retains the legal right and social responsibility 

to amend the Federal Reserve Act and related legislation when such amendments 

are judged to be in the national interest. To exercise this duty, the Congress must 

have the right to assess the performance of existing Federal Reserve powers and responsibilities. 

The Federal Reserve (Fed) was created by Congress in 1913 with limited responsibilities. These included: the establishment of regional Federal Reserve Banks; the 

provision of an elastic currency; the rediscounting of commercial paper; and, the supervision of Federal Reserve member banks. Over the years Congress amended the 

Federal Reserve Act to liberalize constraints on Fed operations, establish a Federal 

Reserve Open Market Committee, change the Fed’s governance structure, require 

59 

1http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/reformltransaction.htm 2http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/reformldiscountlwindow.htm 3http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/OMOltransactionldata.html 4This discussion borrows from Marc Labonte, ‘‘Federal Reserve: Oversight and Disclosure’’, 

Congressional Research Service, September 19, 2014. 5 31 U.S. Code Sec. 714. The GAO normally has a number of separate Federal Reserve audits 

underway in any single year. The Federal Reserve System also has an Office of Inspector General (OIG) that is responsible for detecting and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse. The Fed’s 

OIG also issues semiannual reports to Congress. 

periodic reports by the Fed Chairman to Congress, and assign the Fed specific monetary policy goals. 

For most of the Fed’s history, its battle for independence has been a struggle to 

formulate monetary policy without interference from the executive branch. Before 

the Fed won its independence from the U.S. Treasury in the early 1950s, many Administrations had run the Federal Reserve as if it were a captive finance arm of 

the U.S. Treasury. 

Today the battle for Federal Reserve independence is a struggle to maintain minimal Congressional oversight over some of its operational areas, and a fight to maintain the legal luxury to carefully manage the Fed’s operational transparency. The 

current struggle is probably less about safeguarding monetary policy from being 

high-jacked by parochial Congressional interests, but more about safeguarding 

unique Federal Reserve privacy privileges derived from its monetary policy functions. 

Critics of ‘‘audit the Fed’’ proposals argue that the modern Federal Reserve is already transparent regarding its monetary policy deliberations and operations. True, 

the Fed now releases minutes and transcripts from its FOMC meetings with modest 

delays, and it has Web sites that document the details of its balance sheet and securities holdings. The Dodd-Frank Act pushed the Fed to disclose details about borrowers using the Feds emergency credit facilities 1 and, beginning in 2012, the Fed 

was required to release detailed data on discount window borrowing 2 and open market transactions 3 with a 2 year lag. 

While the Fed has responded to public and Congressional pressures and become 

much more transparent in its disclosures in recent years, disclosure is not the same 

thing as oversight. Oversight involves independent evaluation of process and performance. 4 The Federal Banking Agency Audit Act of 1978 gives the GAO audit authority over the Federal Reserve, but prohibited it from auditing: 5

• Transactions with or for foreign central banks, Governments, or nonprivate 

international financing organizations 

• Deliberations or actions concerning monetary policy 

• Federal Open Market Committee transactions 

• Discussions and communications between Federal Reserve members, officers, or 

employees associated with the prior three areas. 

Given the uncertainties associated with the long-run economic impacts of the 

Fed’s postcrisis monetary policy, some in Congress favor an expanded role for the 

GAO that includes the power to make an independent assessment of the Fed’s monetary policy. For example, among other legislative features, S. 264 (the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015) would remove all restrictions on the GAO’s ability 

to audit the Federal Reserve. An alternative proposal, H.R. 5018 (the Federal Reserve Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014) would remove all GAO audit restrictions but also require the Fed to provide the Congress with detailed information 

regarding its monetary policy decision rule. 

Congress created the Federal Reserve and Congress retains the power to evaluate 

Federal Reserve performance and amend the Federal Reserve Act. In this context, 

the ‘‘audit the Fed’’ debate is about whether Congress should deputize the GAO to 

evaluate Fed performance, not whether the Congress has the power to do so. Whatever the outcome of the ‘‘audit the Fed’’ debate, ideally Federal Reserve oversight 

should be designed to allow Congress to ask and receive answers to its questions 

and criticisms, including about the Fed’s monetary policy, but still shield the Fed 

from undue pressure to alter monetary policy to satisfy short-run political interests. 

The modern Federal Reserve does far more than monetary policy, and the Fed’s 

nonmonetary policy duties also raise important accountability concerns. The DoddFrank Act (the Act) granted the Federal Reserve extensive new powers to formulate 

supervision, regulation, and bankruptcy reorganization standards for large financial 

institutions, and yet the Act itself includes no explicit congressional control over 

these expanded Federal Reserve powers. Indeed recent speeches by Federal Reserve 

60 

6The Federal Reserve chairman and vice-chairman face Senate confirmation every 4 years. 

Federal Reserve governors are confirmed by the Senate, but limited to a 14-year term unless 

they are initially filling a partial term of departing governor. Regional Federal Reserve Bank 

presidents are not confirmed by the Senate. 7 If however, there are legal impediments for GAO audits, simple amendments to the DoddFrank Act, like extending Section 122 powers to other sections of the Act, could explicitly provide the needed powers. 8 Report to the Ranking Member, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. 

Senate, ‘‘Financial Stability Oversight Council: Further Actions Could Improve the Nonbank 

Designation Process’’, GAO, November 2014. 9http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/FSB-Chair-letter-to-G20-February-2015.pdf 

officials argue that these new Fed ‘‘macroprudential powers’’ are an essential complement to monetary policy, especially in the current zero interest rate environment. 

Using its expanded regulatory powers, the Federal Reserve has the ability to 

shape the growth and development of the entire U.S. financial system. Unless the 

Congress exercises heightened oversight and control over the Federal Reserve’s use 

of these expanded regulatory powers, Congress will delegate decisions that determine the future vitality of U.S. financial markets to unelected Federal Reserve officials who are at best only weakly accountable to the public. 6

In the remainder of my testimony, I will focus on the need for expanded congressional oversight over the Fed’s Dodd-Frank regulatory powers and related operations. Current legal authorities appear adequate and do not appear to restrict the 

GAO’s ability to audit the Federal Reserve’s regulatory activities, including audits 

on the Federal Reserve’s use of its expanded regulatory powers. 7 In the remainder 

of my testimony I will highlight three areas where I think Congress should step up 

its oversight of the Federal Reserve’s enhanced supervision and regulation operations. 

The Federal Reserve’s Relationship to International Standard Setting Bodies 

The Congress should exercise closer oversight over the Federal Reserve’s ongoing 

interactions with international standard-setting bodies like the Financial Stability 

Board, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. 

A recent GAO report 8 examined the relationship between Financial Stability 

Oversight Council (FSOC) designations of nonbank financial firms for enhanced supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve Board and prior designations of the 

same firms (as global systemically important institutions) by the Financial Stability 

Board (FSB). Since the Treasury and Federal Reserve are both members of the FSB 

designation group, this coincidence raised concern that the FSOC designation decisions were actually made during FSB deliberations, well before the FSOC completed 

its designation analysis. 

The GAO reported that Treasury and Federal Reserve officials it interviewed argued that FSB designations imposed no constraint on the FSOC’s subsequent designations, but were just ‘‘another factor’’ taken into account in the FSOC deliberations. The GAO report also includes commentary and footnotes that suggest that 

GAO investigators had a difficult time believing these claims. The GAO noted that 

FSB documents report that national authorities are consulted before the FSB designates individual institutions. 

A recent letter to G20 Ministers and Central Bank Governors dated February 4, 

2015, 9 raises new issues regarding the Federal Reserve’s participation in FSB work 

streams including work streams that make FSB designations. In the letter, FSB 

chairman (and governor of the Bank of England) Mark Carney, makes clear to FSB 

members that the decisions of the FSB are directives, which all FSB members are 

expected to carry out. In this letter, Carney states specifically that FSB members— 

including the Federal Reserve—have agreed to ‘‘Full, consistent and prompt implementation of agreed reforms.’’ 

FSB chairman Carney’s letter notes that ‘‘FSB peer reviews’’ will cover ‘‘implementation of the G20 policy framework.’’ Carney reinforces the point mentioning 

that the FSB’s will use its oversight as a means for achieving its objectives: ‘‘The 

FSB will support the determined efforts of its members through enhanced monitoring of implementation and its effects across all jurisdictions. We will regularly 

report our key findings to the G20.’’ 

The Federal Reserve apparently has agreed that its financial regulatory policies 

and institution designations will be guided by FSB directives that it has agreed to 

implement. Moreover, the Fed appears to have agreed to have its policy implementation overseen by a body dominated by European bureaucrats and chaired by the 

61 

10 No other agency has a staff as large, technically sophisticated, or as academically 

credentialed as the Federal Reserve. For example, the Federal Reserve Board has more than 

350 economists on its home Web page, http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/ 

theeconomists.htm and virtually all of them have Ph.D.s. This does not include Federal Reserve 

economists at the Reserve Banks. For example, the New York Fed alone lists 71 Ph.D. economists on its Web site. In contrast, on their respective Web sites, the CFTC lists 10 economists, 

the FDIC lists 19 economists, FHFA lists 15 Ph.D. equivalent economists, and the newly ‘‘economist fortified’’ SEC lists roughly 70 economists. 11See the letter dated July 9, 2014, from Representative Garrett to William Dudley expressing concerns and additional information about the New York Fed’s extensive involvement on the 

FSOC designation process. 12http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/fsoc/designations/Documents/ 

Dissenting%20and%20Minority%20Views.pdf 

governor of the Bank of England. While the U.S. Treasury was clearly aware of 

these developments by virtue of their own FSB membership and participation, it 

does not appear that the U.S. Congress received prior consultation before the Federal Reserve made these commitments. 

Recent experience raises legitimate concerns that the Federal Reserve and the 

Treasury have been deciding on FSOC designations well before the FSOC finalizes 

its analysis. Given the unbalanced nature of FSOC member resources, pressure 

from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board on other FSOC members would 

likely be more than adequate to ensure a specific institution’s designation. The November 14 GAO report documents that Federal Reserve has by far the largest staff 

allocated to the FSOC designations process and it is unlikely that few if any of the 

other FSOC members without a direct regulatory interest would challenge the Federal Reserve Board staff on its designation conclusions. 10 Indeed Federal Reserve 

influence on FSOC designations goes beyond the Board of Governors as there are 

reports that Federal Reserve Bank of New York staff has also been heavily involved 

and influential in the FSOC designation process. 11

The recent FSOC decision regarding Metlife’s designation for heightened prudential standards and supervision by the Federal Reserve Board highlights the overwhelming influence that the Federal Reserve Board and Treasury can have on the 

FSOC designation process, especially when the FSOC’s members have no direct interest in the nonbank industry under consideration. Dissenting from the FSOC’s 

Metlife designation was the council’s independent member having insurance expertise and the Council’s State insurance commissioner representative. 12 Moreover, the 

State insurance commissioners from five States—California, Connecticut, Delaware, 

New York, and North Carolina—independently wrote to FSOC Chairman Lew to 

protest the Metlife designation. 

The Metlife dissent opinion written by the FSOC’s independent member with insurance expertise was particularly informative about the relationship between FSB 

designation and subsequent FSOC decisions. It is worth quoting at length: 

On July 18, 2013, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international organization within the umbrella of the Group of Twenty (G20), primarily 

comprising the world’s finance ministers and central bankers, including the 

U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Board of Governors, 

announced that it had identified MetLife as a global systemically important 

financial institution (G–SIFI). G–SIFIs are declared by the FSB to be ‘‘institutions of such size, market importance, and global interconnectedness that 

their distress or failure would cause significant dislocation in the global financial system and adverse economic consequences across a range of countries.’’ Thus, MetLife was declared by the FSB as a threat not to just the 

U.S. financial system, but to the entire global financial system. 

The FSB’s announcement of the identification of MetLife and eight other 

insurers as G–SIFIs stated that its action had been taken ‘‘in collaboration 

with the standard-setters and national authorities;’’ and, that as G–SIFIs, 

these organizations would be subject to policy measures including immediate enhanced groupwide supervision, as well as to recovery and resolution 

planning requirements. It is clear to me that the consent and agreement 

by some of the Council’s members at the FSB to identify MetLife a G–SIFI, 

along with their commitment to use their best efforts to regulate said companies accordingly, sent a strong signal early-on of a predisposition as to 

the status of MetLife in the U.S—ahead of the Council’s own decision by 

all of its members. 

Despite subsequent assertions by some of the Council’s members that the 

FSB and Council processes are separate and distinct, they are in my mind 

very much interconnected and not dissimilar. It would seem to follow that 

62 

13http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/rl130829c.pdf 14http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/rl140108.pdf?pagelmoved=1 

FSB members who consent to the FSB’s identification of G–SIFIs also commit to impose consolidated supervision, yet-to-be agreed-to capital standards, resolution planning, and other heightened prudential measures on 

those G–SIFIs that are domiciled in their jurisdictions. 

These pointed remarks from FSOC members make it apparent that the Congress 

must exercise closer oversight over the Federal Reserve’s participation in FSB work 

streams. The Congress could exercise additional oversight using GAO audits, hearings, or through other legislation. For example, H.R. 5018 would require the Fed 

to notify congressional committees with jurisdiction and the general public 90 days 

prior to its intention to enter into or complete negotiations with international committees or standard setting bodies. 

Regardless of the method the Congress selects, it needs to improve oversight of 

Federal Reserve’s involvement in FSB initiatives, especially those regarding the capital regulation of insurance firms including any work streams on capital surcharges 

for insurance firms designated as global systemically important institutions as well 

as Federal Reserve involvement in FSB work streams focused on the designation 

of systemically important nonbank noninsurance (a.k.a. shadow bank) institutions 

and the enhanced regulation of ‘‘shadow banking’’ activities. 13

When Federal Reserve officials refer to shadow banking, they are referring to activities that primarily associated with the asset management industry. In January 

2014, the FSB issued a consultative document discussing a designation process for 

nonbank noninsurer systemically important firms. 14 Firms fitting the FSB’s consultative document profile are large asset management institutions. In November 

2014, the FSB committed to issue policy recommendations that will establish regulatory minimum ‘‘haircuts’’ for securities financing transactions (securities lending 

and repurchase agreements) among shadow banks. Mirroring these developments, 

senior Federal Reserve officials used recent speeches to telegraph the Federal Reserve’s intention to impose marketwide minimum haircuts on securities lending and 

repurchase transactions. Federal Reserve officials have also identified high-yield 

short-maturity by mutual fund investments as a shadow banking activity that 

should be discouraged as a potential source systemic risk. 

The FSB is also in the process of recommending changes in insurance regulation. 

In October 2013, the FSB directed the International Association of Insurance Supervisors to develop a comprehensive supervisory and regulatory framework, including 

a risk-based global insurance capital standard for internationally active insurers as 

well as basic capital requirements (BCR) and higher loss absorbency (HLA) requirements for global systemically important insurance institutions. The Federal Reserve 

is an important member of this FSB insurance work stream and many observers 

believe that the Federal Reserve will eventually try to impose the FSB’s insurance 

regulatory capital standards on State-regulated domestic U.S. insurers. The potential conflict with FSB insurance capital initiatives and U.S. insurance company capital requirements will be discussed in a subsequent section of my testimony. 

If recent history is a guide, the policies the Federal Reserve develops in these and 

any other FSB work streams will form the basis of the policies the Federal Reserve 

subsequently attempts to impose as domestic regulations. It is important for Congress to step up its oversight of the Federal Reserve’s involvement in FSB activities 

so it can make a timely evaluation of regulatory developments. Once FSB work 

streams conclude, it becomes more difficult for Congress to intervene and alter policies. 

Congress Should Assess the Merits of Dodd-Frank Section 165 Stress Tests 

Congresses should instruct the GAO to assess the costs, benefits, and processes 

associated with the recurring Board of Governors stress tests mandated by Section 

165 of the Dodd-Frank Act. These stress tests are very resource-intensive, both for 

banks and for the banking regulators, and there is little evidence that they are a 

cost-effective and objective means for regulating individual financial institutions. 

Section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act directs the Board of Governors to establish 

heighted prudential standards that apply to bank holding companies with consolidated assets in excess of $50 billion and nonbank financial firms designated by the 

FSOC. Included in Section 165 is the requirement that these institutions participate 

in an annual stress test exercise supervised by the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve is required to publish the results of these annual stress tests. In addition, financial institutions with $10 billion in consolidated assets and a primary 

63 

15 I am adapting Kevin Dowd’s analogy in, ‘‘Math Gone Mad: Regulatory Risk Modeling by 

the Federal Reserve’’, CATO Policy Analysis No. 754, September 3, 2014. 16For some examples, see: C. Borio, M. Drehmann, and K. Tsatsaronis, ‘‘Stress-Testing Macro 

Stress Testing: Does It Live up to Expectaions?’’ Bank for International Settlements, November 

2011; or, Til Schuermann, ‘‘The Fed’s Stress Tests Add Risk to the Financial System’’, The Wall 

Street Journal, March 19, 2013; or, L. Guerrieri and M. Welch, ‘‘Can Macro Variables Used in 

Stress Testing Forecast the Performance of Banks?’’ Federal Reserve Board Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-49. 

Federal regulator must conduct annual stress tests similar to the Board of Governors stress test and report the results to their primary Federal regulator. 

Congress should consider an extensive audit of the Dodd-Frank mandate for recurring Federal Reserve Board stress tests. The audit should include an independent assessment of the Federal Reserve Board’s stress test models and methodology including an assessment of the predictive accuracy (i.e., assess the confidence 

bounds) of the Federal Reserve’s methodology. Assessments should evaluate the consistency with which the Federal Reserve Board applies its quantitative and qualitative stress test assessments both across institutions within a year and Fed’s consistency across time. Independent assessors should identify weaknesses in the methodology and evaluate the Federal Reserve Board’s internal approach for identifying 

and managing stress test methodology weaknesses. The examination should include 

the remediation process that occurs when a bank disputes the Fed’s findings. Assessors should have confidential discussions with the financial institutions that have 

participated in these stress test exercises and report on these institution’s concerns 

with the Fed’s processes. The audit should evaluate the costs and benefits of using 

this methodology as a primary input in supervision and regulation of individual institutions. 

The Board of Governors stress tests mandated by Dodd-Frank Act are expensive 

both for the banks and bank regulatory agency resources that could be deployed in 

other productive supervisory activities. These stress tests have dubious predictive 

power for identifying hidden financial system imbalances or for identifying risks in 

specific institutions financial institutions that would otherwise remain undetected. 

The quantitative outcome of these stress tests is arbitrary and completely under the 

control of the Federal Reserve Board because the stress tests estimates involve an 

overwhelming amount of judgment on the part of the stress tester. Consequently 

stress test results cannot be replicated by different independent stress testers. Since 

banks cannot accurately anticipate the Fed’s stress test results even when they 

know the macroeconomic stress scenarios, this mandatory process interjects a huge 

and unproductive source of uncertainty in the bank planning process. 

Board of Governor stress tests are a particularly problematic form of enhanced 

prudential supervision because there is no objectively correct answer in a Board of 

Governor’s stress test. Participants are required to produce specific numerical answers questions that have no single correct answer knowing that the Board of Governors has wide discretion to decide the ‘‘correct’’ at will by changing modeling assumptions. Moreover, institutions have no mechanism to challenge the Board of 

Governors on the accuracy of Board’s preferred correct answer. 15

Many have questioned the value of macroeconomic scenario stress tests for identifying and mitigating financial sector excesses, 16 and yet the Federal Reserve System spends an enormous amount of resources and requires covered institutions to 

spend significant sums on the activity. Already, Fed stress tests have missed the 

‘‘London Whale’’ at JPM Chase and a multibillion-dollar hole in Bank of America’s 

balance sheet. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both passed Government-designed macroeconomic stress right up to the time they failed in September 2008. Before the 

financial crisis, many countries produced financial stability reports that included 

bank stress tests and none anticipated the crisis. And there are many additional examples where similar tests failed to identify subsequent problems. 

A stress-test based approach for setting bank capital has two gigantic measurement problems. First, the macroeconomic scenario must actually anticipate the next 

financial crisis. And secondly, regulators must be able to translate the macroeconomic crisis scenario into accurate predictions about actual bank profits and 

losses. 

Few regulators possess the prescience necessary to accomplish this first step. In 

2006, the subprime crisis was less than 2 years away, but the Federal Reserve did 

not see it coming. The New York Fed’s staff was publishing papers that dismissed 

the idea of a housing bubble and the Federal Reserve Chairman’s speeches argued— 

worst case—there may be some ‘‘froth’’ in local housing markets. Even as the 

subprime bubble burst, the new Fed Chairman publicly opined that the economy 

would suffer only minor fallout. 

64 

17Til Schuermann, op. cit. makes this argument. 

Even if a stress scenario correctly anticipates a coming crisis, the crisis must be 

translated into individual bank profits and losses. However, bank profits and losses 

are not very tightly linked with changes in macroeconomic indicators. Quarter-toquarter bank profits do not closely follow quarterly changes in GDP, inflation, unemployment, or any other macroeconomic indication. The best macroeconomic stress 

test models explain maybe 25 percent of the quarterly variation in individual bank 

profits and losses, meaning that more than 75 percent of the variation in bank profit 

and losses cannot be predicted using GDP, unemployment, or other business cycle 

indicators. 

Because of these measurement issues, bank loss predictions from macroeconomic 

stress tests have very little objective accuracy. Even using the best models, there 

remains a great deal of uncertainty surrounding how each bank may actually perform in the next crisis, presuming the stress scenario anticipates the crisis. 

These issues make macroeconomic stress testing more of an art than a science 

and a tool that is inappropriate for the supervision on an individual institution. 

There are just too many places to make mistakes. There is no formula or procedure 

that will lead to a single set of stress test bank loss estimates that can be independently calculated by different stress test modelers. Thus, it is not surprising that the 

Board of Governors and the U.S. banks rarely agree on stress test results. 

Less widely appreciated is that these coordinated macroeconomic stress tests encourage a ‘‘group think’’ approach to risk management that may actually increase 

the probability of a financial crisis. 17 Stress test crisis scenarios have to be specific 

so that banks and regulators can model the same event. Moreover, the Board of 

Governors imposes some uniformity in loss rates across all designated banks by 

using its own stress test estimates. The Board of Governors is very much like a 

coach or a central planner that tries to ensure some coherence in each designated 

firms estimates and capital plans. Perhaps unintentionally, by requiring all firms 

to approach the stress test problem in the same way as the Board of Governors, the 

process encourages all large institutions to think and operate the same way. 

A final weakness concern is that the stress test process requires the Board of Governors to be intimately involved in modeling the operations and exposures of each 

large banking institution. The process requires the Federal Reserve Board to use its 

own judgment to set each large bank holding company’s ‘‘stress tested’’ capital plan. 

These regulations have become so intrusive that the regulator virtually runs the 

bank. In such a situation, it becomes difficult for the regulator to admit a mistake 

and allow an institution to fail. 

Congress Should Examine Conflicts Between Federal Reserve and State Insurance Regulation 

Congress should assess potential conflicts that may be developing between the 

Federal Reserve’s Dodd-Frank expanded powers over the domestic insurance industry and State insurance regulations. There are indications that new Federal Reserve 

examination and capital policies for insurers affiliated with a depository institution 

may be generating serious conflicts with existing State insurance supervision and 

regulation, contrary to the intent of the Dodd-Frank Act. 

The new regulatory powers granted by the Dodd-Frank Act to the Federal Reserve 

could lead to substantial changes in insurance regulation. Since the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, insurance regulation has been conducted by the States and their 

insurance commissions. The Dodd-Frank Act created a new Federal Insurance Office 

within the U.S. Treasury, but the Act purposely limited the new office’s responsibilities to monitoring and advisory duties; it does not have national supervisory responsibility. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the Dodd-Frank Act intentionally avoided the creation of a national insurance regulator, many in the insurance industry believe that 

the Federal Reserve is using its new Dodd-Frank powers to become the de facto national insurance supervisor. Moreover, the industry is concerned that these developments could lead to wholesale revisions in the supervision and capital regulations 

that apply to State insurers and result in the imposition of bank-style capital regulation on the insurance industry. 

Section 312 of the Dodd-Frank Act transferred regulatory authority and rulemaking over thrift holding companies and insurance holding companies that owned 

depository institutions from the Office of Thrift Supervision to the Federal Reserve. 

Section 604 of the Act authorizes the Federal Reserve to conduct examinations of 

the nonbank subsidiaries and affiliates of these holding companies even if these institutions have a functional regulator. 

65 

18Testimony of Thomas Sullivan of the Board of Governors before the House Subcommittee 

on Housing and Insurance, November 18, 2014. 19For official Federal Reserve guidance on these examinations, see http:// 

www.federalreserve.gov/bankinforeg/srletters/sr1111a2.pdf. 20For a detailed discussion of the issues that concern the industry see, Letter to Regulatory 

Agencies on Behalf of Nationwide Mutual Company regarding ‘‘Regulatory Capital Rules: Regulatory Capital, Implementation of Basel III, Minimum Regulatory Capital Ratios, Capital Adequacy, Transition Provisions, and Prompt Corrective Action’’, http://www.federalreserve.gov/ 

SECRS/2012/December/20121206/R-1442/R-1442l101712l109102l441597364672l1.pdf. 21See Thomas Sullivan’s testimony. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 

Section 312 empowers the Federal Reserve to examine insurance companies 

whereas, prior to the Dodd-Frank Act, bank regulators were prohibited from examining these State regulated entities. Since acquiring its new powers, the Federal Reserve has launched an extensive examinations program for insurance companies 

owned by thrift and insurance holding companies. These examination often are conducted using newly hired Federal Reserve examiners with little or no insurance experience, even though these insurers being examined are already fully regulated 

and supervised by State insurance commissioners.18 19

These Federal Reserve insurance examinations are causing considerable concern 

for insurers. Industry sources suggest that the Federal Reserve examiners are less 

than fully conversant with State insurance regulations and they frequently find that 

insurer subsidiaries or affiliates are undercapitalized if their capital levels do not 

agree with bank capital standards, even when these insurers are well-capitalized according to long-standing State insurance regulations. Representatives of the insurance industry are worried that, unless Congress intervenes, these Federal Reserve 

insurance examinations and associated holding company regulatory capital restrictions will eventually lead to the imposition of bank regulatory capital standards on 

the entire insurance industry. 

Section 606 of the Dodd Frank Act allows the Federal Reserve to apply its bank 

holding company ‘‘source of strength doctrine’’ to the insurance and thrift holding 

companies it now regulates. Industry sources suggest that the Fed’s erroneous examiner opinions alleging weak capital positions at insurance subsidiaries and affiliates have lead the Fed to conclude that the consolidated capital positons of some 

holding companies must increase. Again, in the opinion of the insurance industry 

experts familiar with the specific details of these cases, these mandated capital increases are not addressing true holding company capital weaknesses. Instead they 

are the result of long-standing and appropriate differences between the capital regulations for insurers (set by the States), and consolidated capital standards for banks 

(set by the U.S. bank regulatory agencies in consultation with the Basel Committee 

on Bank Supervision). 

Industry representatives suggest that the Federal Reserve’s approach for assessing the capital position of thrift and insurance holding companies could lead to new 

insurance industry constraints on dividend payments or other transactions that return capital to shareholders. The Fed can apply its holding company capital rules 

even in cases where the holding company is comprised predominately of insurance 

related activities and includes a subsidiary depository institution that holds only a 

tiny fraction of the holding companies’ assets. 20 Recent congressional testimony by 

Federal Reserve Board Senior Advisor Thomas Sullivan did not allay industry concerns when he reported, ‘‘Our principal supervisory objectives for insurance holding 

companies are protecting the safety and soundness of the consolidated firms and 

their subsidiary depository institutions . . . ’’ 21

With the Fed’s acquisition of thrift and insurance holding company supervision 

and the three large FSOC-designated insurance companies now subject to enhanced 

supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve is 

now the consolidated supervisor of companies that hold about one-third of the asset 

in U.S. insurance industry. 22

Reflecting these new insurance powers, in 2013 the Federal Reserve has joined 

the International Association of Insurance Supervisors—the international standard 

setting body for insurance regulation. The Federal Reserve is now a member of the 

IAIS work stream that is developing global standards for the supervision and regulation internationally active insurers, including regulatory capital standards for insurance groups. 23 This work is part of the overall G20 financial stability initiative 

coordinated by the FSB. The Federal Reserve is also a member of the IAIS group 

that is responsible for identifying global systemically important insurers and designVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6621 Sfmt 6621 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
66 

1Much of the detail, the citations, and other supporting evidence is contained in that paper: 

‘‘The Twelve Federal Reserve Banks: Governance and Accountability in the 21st Century’’, available at http://www.brookings.edu//media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/03/02-fed-banks-21stcentury/fedlbanksl21stlcentury.pdf?la=en. 

ing the enhanced regulatory and supervisory framework that will apply to these institutions. 

The Federal Reserve is a member of the IAIS work stream charged with developing groupwide capital standards for insurance groups. These consolidated capital 

requirements are similar to the consolidated capital requirements for bank holding 

companies. For some years, Europe has been developing new insurance capital 

standards called Solvency II. Solvency II standards are in many respects similar to 

the Basel capital standards for banks and bank holding companies. In fact, Solvency 

II and is often called ‘‘Basel for insurers.’’ The similarity between bank and insurance capital requirements in Europe is no accident because European insurance activities are often conducted as part of a universal banking organization. Because the 

IAIS membership is dominated by European insurance supervisors, many believe 

that, in the end, any new IAIS groupwide standard will strongly resemble Solvency 

II. 

In contrast to Europe, the U.S. does not have a consolidated capital standard for 

insurers. Historically, the U.S. approach to insurer capitalization has served the industry well. It has not resulted in any systemic weaknesses and it likely works to 

contain contagion risk because it limits interdependencies among insurance companies. U.S. capital standards are set for individual State insurance entities that are 

incorporated and fully capitalized within a single State. They are licensed, regulated 

and if need be, liquidated at by the State insurance regulator. Consolidated group 

capital has not been an important issue in the U.S. because each State chartered 

insurance entity must be fully capitalized and cannot rely on capital support from 

a larger insurance group. 

The extent of Federal Reserve involvement in insurance regulation and the potential for the Fed to impose significant changes on insurance supervision and regulation was unlikely to have been anticipated by Congress. The Federal Reserve is now 

poised to become the de facto national insurance regulator that Congress declined 

to create in the Dodd-Frank Act. The Fed is empowered to exam firms that hold 

one-third of insurance industry assets even though these firms are examined by 

State insurance regulators. The Fed is now also the most influential U.S. regulatory 

member charged with designing new capital and supervisory processes in the IAIS/ 

FSB work stream. The Fed is already showing a preference to impose bank capital 

regulations on insurance holding companies and there is industry concern that the 

Fed may agree to Solvency II bank-like capital regulations in its IAIS insurance 

capital work stream. 

This concludes my written remarks. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on 

these issues. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PETER CONTI-BROWN 

ACADEMIC FELLOW, STANFORD LAW SCHOOL, ROCK CENTER FOR CORPORATE

GOVERNANCE

MARCH 3, 2015 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Brown, Members of the Committee, my name is 

Peter Conti-Brown and I am an Academic Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Rock 

Center for Corporate Governance. In July, 2015, I will be an assistant professor of 

legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. I am here today as a legal scholar and a financial historian who studies 

the institutional evolution of central banking, especially in the United States. Much 

of what follows comes from a paper I presented on March 2, 2015, at the Hutchins 

Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. As noted above, 

I reiterate that I speak only on my own behalf. 1

It’s been an exhausting 7 years to be a central banker. It began in the summer 

of 2007 and extended through the shotgun marriage between JPMorgan Chase and 

Bear Stearns, the concomitant resurrection of unusual lending authority, the ongoing implementation of unconventional monetary policy, and so much else in between. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, these have been the times that try central 

bankers’ souls, that test the resolve of the summer hawk or the sunshine dove. 

But these central banking times have been trying not only, perhaps not even especially, for central bankers, but also for the public they serve. This heterogeneous 

67 

2Zeleny, Jeff, and Jackie Calmes, 2011. ‘‘Perry Links Federal Reserve Policies and Treason’’. 

The New York Times, U.S. Politics, August 16. 3To highlight this point, in the original debates during, and for many years following, the 

passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the only word capitalized was frequently ‘‘Federal’’: 

it was the ‘‘Federal reserve board’’ and the ‘‘Federal reserve banks.’’ 4Shepsle (1992). 

5 Conti-Brown (forthcoming, 2015). 

public—including long-standing Fed watchers and those who have only recently realized that the United States has a central bank, those who love the Fed, and those 

who hate it—has not always, or indeed not even very often, been fully comfortable 

with these decisions. The emergency lending—the ‘‘bailouts,’’ in the popular if misleading parlance—that began with Bear Stearns and accelerated through the alphabet soup of Fed and Treasury programs gave birth to the populist–libertarian revival of 2010. And the monetary policy response, especially in unconventional monetary policy, has only exacerbated these tensions. The views of once and future presidential hopeful Rick Perry are emblematic of the feelings of many in the American 

polity: quantitative easing was ‘‘printing more money to play politics,’’ and was, by 

Perry’s lights, ‘‘almost treacherous, or treasonous.’’ 2 In the United States, the Fed 

and its chair were among the most admired of agencies and officials in Government 

at the time of, for example, Alan Greenspan’s retirement in 2006; just a few years 

later, they were among the lowest (Conti-Brown, 2015b). 

As a consequence, there has been no shortage of discussions—during the crisis 

and unceasingly since—about how to reform the Fed. Most of these discussions, 

though, have been on reforming the Fed’s functions. That is, changing the way it 

lends money in an emergency, how it determines which financial institutions are 

systemically important, how it accounts for its spending and decisions, how it determines its models of the economy, and how it makes monetary policy. The answer 

to the question: ‘‘What does the Fed do, and what should it do?’’ is no doubt essential to our understanding of what lessons for central banking we are to take from 

the recent crisis. 

Less discussed, however, is the Fed’s structure, raising the question, ‘‘Who is the 

Fed?’’ Public and scholarly attention on the Fed usually focuses on a monolithic it, 

or on the personal she or he. In fact, the standard grammatical practice—followed 

in this paper—is to refer to the Federal Reserve (or just ‘‘the Fed’’) as a proper 

noun. The Fed raised interest rates; the Fed bailed out AIG; the Fed issued new 

banking regulations; the Fed fired a bank examiner for challenging Goldman Sachs. 

But this linguistic practice is an institutional, and even grammatical, error. The 

term ‘‘Federal Reserve’’ is not a noun, but a compound adjective. There are Federal 

Reserve Banks, Federal Reserve Notes, a Federal Reserve Board, and, taken together, a Federal Reserve System, all created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. 

But there is no ‘‘Federal Reserve’’ by itself. 3 This vocabulary failure belies a harder 

problem for thinking about the Federal Reserve System—even though we rarely 

refer to it as such, to paraphrase Kenneth Shepsle, the Fed is a ‘‘they,’’ not an ‘‘it.’’ 4

This is not a pedantic grammatical point. Understanding the Fed’s complex ecosystem and the institutional actors within the Federal Reserve System is essential 

to understanding the space within which the Fed makes policy. It also speaks to 

the very independence that some distrust and others hold very dear. This complexity also illustrates a problem not just of public understanding—though it is certainly that—but also one of governance. When the public is faced with a monolith, 

all debates about Fed actions—no matter where they occur within the system, and 

no matter what those actions may be—easily spiral into debates. Such debates involve the first principles about the gold standard, the Coinage Clause of the U.S. 

Constitution, and the pure democratic virtues of Thomas Jefferson over the venal 

tyrannies of Alexander Hamilton. 

My book, The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve takes up the largely 

descriptive task of laying out the governance, independence, and structure of the 

Federal Reserve System, especially as that structure has evolved over time. 5 It relates it to the conception of central bank independence that grew out of a historical 

moment in the 1980s and 1990s. But this paper examines one aspect of the largely 

normative issue of central bank design: not what the Fed is, but what it should be. 

In particular, this is a question of the federal in the Federal Reserve, looking at the 

curious decisions of institutional design to place some authority in a Government 

agency in Washington, DC, and other authority dispersed unevenly in mostly private regional Federal Reserve Banks. It is a question of whether or not this failed 

experiment in quasi-federalism and central banks (and without question, it was a 

failure) should inform our discussions of structural reform today. 

68 

6See Conti-Brown, ‘‘The Institutions of Federal Reserve Independence’’, Yale Journal on Regulation, forthcoming 2015. 

My policy prescriptions vary from those offered by Sen. Paul, who recommends 

an audit of the Federal Reserve, and different too from the bill pending before the 

House Financial Services Committee, that would mandate that the Fed follow a 

monetary policy rule or explain its deviations to congressional hearings and the 

Government Accountability Office. These bills focus on the policies of the Fed. Given 

the massive uncertainty about the future and the real potential for mischief that 

subjecting the Federal Reserve to the day-to-day of political pressure could produce, 

I favor instead focusing on the Fed’s governance structure and the proposal that we 

should have more presidential and congressional control at the highest level of policymaking at the Federal Reserve. 

The Reserve Banks 

Once we accept that there is a role to play for Government in implementing policies that redound to the social good—a sometimes contested proposition, but one 

that enjoys relatively widespread support—we must answer two additional questions: (1) How will those governmental agents be selected? and (2) Will their policies 

reflect that ‘‘social good,’’ or some other set of values? 

This is the fundamental question for the Reserve Banks’ continued participation 

in the formulation of the Nation’s banking and monetary policies. As I explain in 

more detail elsewhere, the Reserve Banks—especially the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York—have the potential to make policy and constitutional trouble. Reforming 

the Reserve Banks by revisiting the question of the appointment of their leaders 

should be the top priority of any politician who wants the system to conform to constitutional requirements and to allow meaningful democratic accountability. 

The problems with the Reserve Banks are in the nature of their appointment and 

restrictions on their removal. There are three alternatives for resolving this problem: (1) make the U.S. President responsible for appointing the Reserve Bank presidents; (2) make only the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York a Presidential appointment, or most convincing, (3) make the Board of Governors responsible for both appointing and removing the Reserve Bank presidents. I will address 

each in turn. 

The first alternative is the perennial proposal to vest the appointment of the Reserve Bank presidents in the U.S. President, with the Senate confirming those appointments. This would resolve absolutely the constitutional issues of appointment 

and removal, which I address in more detail elsewhere. 6 And the statute could be 

clarified to demonstrate a hierarchy in nonmonetary policy, placing the Reserve 

Banks under the supervision of the board. But this would also allow the Reserve 

Banks to remain on the FOMC as equals to the governors. Given the diversity of 

their views, this seems a promising reform. 

Of course, the recent trend toward failing to fill the appointments on the Board 

of Governors may suggest that the fate would be the same for the newly installed 

Presidential appointments at the Reserve Banks, as discussed above. This possibility also points toward rendering the Reserve Banks fully accountable to the Board 

of Governors. At the same time, it is not likely that we would see the same vacancy 

rates at the Reserve Banks as we have at the Board of Governors, for two reasons. 

First, filibuster reform made it much harder for the minority party to block presidential nominees. And second, the vastly expanded Senate franchise at the Federal 

Reserve might make Reserve Bank presidents look more like ambassadors or U.S. 

attorneys, positions that don’t usually attract the same kinds of partisan political 

attention we associate with Senate gridlock. Even so, this concern is enough to 

weigh against a policy proposal in favor of rendering the Reserve Banks presidential 

appointments. 

There’s another reason why making the heads of the 12 Reserve Bank Presidential appointments seems a misplaced policy. It would almost be sentimental. If 

all members of the FOMC become Presidential appointments, the value of a 19-person committee must come from something other than the process of their appointment (the strongest justification under the current arrangement). If the problems 

that inhere to the other proposed alternatives are enough to defeat those proposals—that is, to subject the Reserve Bank presidents to board removal, or board 

appointment and removal—it may be appropriate to entertain the idea that motivated Marriner Eccles back in 1935: removing the Reserve Banks entirely from the 

world of making policy. The Reserve Banks could continue to exist as branch offices 

of the Federal Reserve in the 12 cities where they are located, but they would not 

participate on the FOMC. And, consistent with Carter Glass’s original conception, 

the Fed could then expand its presence even more evenly to other cities, even reVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6621 Sfmt 6621 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
69 

7The Federal Reserve Act does give the Board of Governors approval over the appointment 

of the Reserve Banks. While there are anecdotal reports about the frequency with which the 

board exercises this veto, this still needs to be confirmed systematically. ‘‘The president shall 

be the chief executive officer of the bank and shall be appointed by the Class B and Class C 

directors of the bank, with the approval of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, for a term of 5 years’’ (12 U.S.C. §341). 

moving regional banks from places where they no longer serve a useful purpose. 

That way, we could revisit some of the decisions about the design of the system that 

were curious even in 1914 when they were decided: Do we really need two Fed 

branches in Missouri, and only one west of Dallas? 

Third, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) has proposed making only the president of the 

Federal Reserve Bank of New York subject to Presidential appointment and Senate 

confirmation. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and its president are by far 

the most important players in the system from both banking and monetary policy 

perspectives. Giving more presidential and congressional accountability to this key 

figure in the financial system would go a very long way to ensuring that the public 

can participate, appropriately, in the governance of its central bank. 

I would prefer a third proposal: Vest the appointment and removal of the Reserve 

Bank presidents in the Board of Governors. 7 There would no longer be multiple layers of removal protection, nor a complicated asymmetry in the appointment and removal dynamic. In that sense, the change would complete the revolution in central 

banking design that Marriner Eccles began 80 years ago. 

This solution does present something of a quandary. If the Board of Governors 

fully appointed, and could remove at will, the Reserve Bank presidents, what would 

be the point of the 19-person FOMC at all? Wouldn’t this just make the Federal Reserve Bank president a member of the Fed’s senior staff? And why give them votes 

on the Nation’s monetary policy? 

The answer to these questions seems obvious. Making the Reserve Bank presidents fully subject to board appointment and removal would also mean the abolition 

of the FOMC and the consolidation of all the Fed’s legal authority at that board. 

As mentioned earlier, even for those who favor the mixed committee system as a 

check on inflation, there are sharper ways to accomplish this task. It’s unclear what 

we gain by having such an unwieldy committee. 

One argument in favor of retaining the current committee size is that each Reserve Bank president comes equipped to FOMC meetings, at least in part, with research conducted independent of the board’s own staff assessments. But this feature 

of the Fed’s dispersed research function is preservable, if it is indeed desirable. That 

is, governors can gain better access to staff assessments, rather than consume only 

the options the chair has shaped with the staff ahead of FOMC meetings. In other 

words, getting diversity of research views presented at the FOMC is not tied to the 

existence of a 19-person committee. 

Federal Reserve Staff 

There are currently 15 divisions at the Fed’s Board of Governors, each appointed 

by the Board, none vetted publicly. For some of them, and perhaps just for one of 

them, I would propose that the Senate consider revising that appointment process. 

For example, the Director of International Affairs exercises extraordinary policy 

authority on behalf of the United States. True, there is much in the position that 

is very technical. But there is much, too, that is highly diplomatic. If the Director 

of International Affairs is seen in the latter role—as essentially the Fed’s chief diplomat—presidential appointment is very desirable. The Fed’s role in the international economy has increased substantially in the last 30 years. The argument for 

presidential appointment for this key position is very strong. 

The strongest argument for presidential appointment among Fed staff is in the 

position of General Counsel. The Fed’s chief lawyer, as discussed in chapter four, 

exercises extraordinary authority. As this book has argued at great length, the laws 

of Fed independence and authority are difficult to parse. The idea that the exercise 

of legal expertise as a purely technocratic function has been dead for eighty years. 

These positions require value judgments informed by technical expertise. While I 

don’t argue that these functions should be subject to constant debate on the floor 

of the House, the case for allowing the public to vet the appointment of these lawyers is essentially ironclad. 

Two points of comparison are useful here. First, unlike the case with the other 

‘‘barons’’ of the Fed staff, the Fed Board is not in a position to exercise significant 

oversight over the Fed’s chief lawyer. As discussed above, the Fed has become increasingly dominated by economists, a transition away from a tradition of bankers 

and lawyers. There are good reasons for this transition, but one consequence is that 

70 

the Fed is not in the position to push back against or even, perhaps, understand 

the issues of value judgments that a lawyer must make when making a recommendation as monumental as what kind of collateral counts when extending 

emergency loans or whether an enforcement decision matches the degree of noncompliance with which it is associated. This is not the fault of the Board, but a reflection that theirs is largely a different kind of expertise. As of this writing, there 

are two lawyers on the Fed’s Board, but only one who has spent a significant portion of his career dealing with the legal issues relevant to the Fed’s regulatory work. 

Second, while other general counsels at administrative agencies are not subject 

to presidential appointment, the Fed’s chief lawyer makes judgments of extraordinary importance that are unlikely to ever be subject to judicial review. Courts 

have made clear for 80 years that they will not review the Fed’s decision about monetary policy, including when those decisions require novel interpretations of law. 

And in the crisis, emergency decisions were made that have been effectively removed from judicial review, including violations of State corporate law and issues 

raised by the Constitution. While judicial review still occurs in many of the Fed’s 

regulatory determinations, in places where value judgments are of the most consequence, the Fed’s lawyer is the first and last word on what the law allows or forbids. For this reason, the Fed’s chief lawyer should be a presidential appointment. 

Other Policy Proposals 

There are two proposals for reform that have circulated historically, perennially, 

and are pending before this Committee or the House Financial Services Committee. 

The three proposals are (1) to audit the Fed annually through the Government Accountability Office; and (2) to legislative a monetary policy rule and require the Fed 

to follow it or explain its deviation to congressional committees with, again, support 

from the GAO. 

The first proposal has been around for decades and continues as a perennial favorite for those who seek to understand and reform the Fed. That proposal is to subject the Fed to an annual, transparent audit performed by the Government Accountability Office. Many within the Fed view the ‘‘Audit the Fed’’ bills and their proponents with fear and loathing and equate the practice with an end of Fed independence. I don’t share those convictions, at least not completely. That is, the public 

audit part of the proposal strikes me as a scholar and as a citizen as an essential 

part of the way we can understand what the Fed, what the Fed does, and who on 

the outside tries to influence Fed behavior. And, historically, Congress has mandated at least two partial public audits—in 1978 and 2010—that the Fed vociferously opposed. What we learn about Fed practices, especially from its lending behavior during the crisis, is essential to our comprehension of this opaque institution. 

What troubles me about the Audit the Fed bills is the regularity of those audits. 

The potential for one-off audits is a sufficient deterrent for the truly scandalous behavior. As noted, it is frankly astonishing that the Fed, given its robust financial 

independence, has never had a scandal such as those that have plagued other agencies including, ironically, the GAO itself. The problem with the regularity of the audits is that they will inject politics deep into the everyday operations of the Fed. 

At present, the Fed and its officials testify regularly before Congress, but more in 

a question and answer format. These hearings are public and allow for members of 

both the House and the Senate committees to explore any question of interest. And 

the committees can summon the Fed at their own prompting. 

What an audit would do is force the Fed to structure all of its activities toward 

that kind of transparency. While not as much of an intrusion as the hostage holding 

that would occur through the appropriations process, it would significantly decrease 

the distance between the Congress and the Fed that currently exists. Because of the 

deterrent benefits of potential audits and the opportunities that members of Congress already have for public accountability through congressional hearings, I see 

annual audits as part of the same problem. 

The second proposal is the newest, although it too has antecedents in history. 

That proposal would require the Fed to follow a version of the ‘‘Taylor Rule’’, a 

model of the monetary policy for the years 1987–1992 written by Stanford economist 

John B. Taylor in 1992 and causing a large outpouring of research from Taylor and 

others following in his wake. The rule would require the Fed to conform its monetary policies to a basic formula that relates a number of variables, including the 

level of current inflation, unemployment, and targets for economic growth and inflation. The Fed would input a standard set of coefficients to its empirical determination of the economic indicators (inflation, unemployment, the output gap, and so 

forth); the interest rate is the output of the equation. Within 48 hours of each 

FOMC meeting, the FOMC would submit to the GAO its determination of the TayVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6621 Sfmt 6621 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
71 

lor Rule and be audited thereafter by the GAO. If the Fed deviated from the Taylor 

Rule, it would have to appear before a congressional committee to explain itself. 

This is a very controversial bill, I think for good reason. I am not an economist 

and have no particular insight into whether the Taylor Rule reflects the best version 

of monetary policy. But economists do not agree either. Some of the concerns are 

not about the need for Rules—the Fed has been following a modified version of the 

Taylor Rule for years. It is on the value of those coefficients, and whether the determinations made in the Taylor paper, based on data from 1987–1992 are in fact portable to all times and all places. 

While my research tells us little about whether monetary rules are superior, it 

does tell us something about the nature of law and personnel. Intricate rules like 

the one proposed in the Taylor Bill are subject to legal entropy. By inserting the 

GAO into the monetary policy equation, we cannot predict the institutional consequences. It is not far-fetched to predict, depending on the personnel choices made 

under the Taylor Bill regime, monetary policy drift from the central bank to the 

GAO. This result isn’t guaranteed by the bill, of course, but the point of this book 

is to argue that the legal institutions established at one time period cannot be trusted to stay in place. For this reason, the legal modifications proposed here are entirely about public scrutiny of personnel decisions, not policy rules. 

To put the point differently, the Taylor Rule may well be exactly the right approach to monetary policy. If that’s the case, we should appoint John Taylor to the 

Fed, not insert the GAO and congressional committees into the micromanagement 

of monetary policy. 

Conclusion 

The impulse behind Fed reform on the left and the right comes from the recognition that the Fed wields extraordinary authority that the public does not always understand. At the same time, one of the central innovations of institutional design 

in the 20th century was to create central banks that could exist apart from the dayto-day of electoral politics. The task for the Congress is to continue to maintain that 

buffer from politics without eliminating the Fed’s public accountability. I believe focusing on the Fed’s governance as opposed to micromanaging the Fed’s policies is 

the best way to achieve that balance. 

72 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF 

CHAIRMAN SHELBY FROM ALLAN H. MELTZER 

Dear Mr. Chairman, I would like to offer a brief statement before 

answering your questions. My statement tells you why I believe 

Federal Reserve reform is important and necessary. 

In the past few years—2008–14, the Federal Reserve quadrupled 

the size of its balance sheet by buying up large parts of the Government debt and Government guaranteed mortgages. By these actions, the Federal Reserve added several trillion dollars to available bank reserves. 

The end result of these actions is highly uncertain. One can be 

skeptical that it will work out to the benefit of the Nation, but the 

outcome is uncertain. 

Even if the outcome is reached without serious problem, the Congress must ask if it can permit an agency of Government to have 

the unrestrained power to quadruple its balance sheet without any 

formal oversight by the Congress. 

My answer is a firm NO. That is not the Government of limited 

powers that safeguards our liberty. Congress must legislate to restrict future actions of this kind by passing a rule. 

Q.1. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that much of the 

authority previously delegated to the New York Fed to oversee the 

many of the Nation’s largest banks has been, in effect, revoked and 

given to a secret committee run by Governor Tarullo. One of Dallas 

Fed President Fisher’s proposals calls for moving supervision of a 

‘‘systemically important’’ bank to a district outside where that bank 

is based in order to address the potential for regulatory capture. Is 

it better to centralize control of systemic regulation at the Board 

of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or rotate it among Federal Reserve Banks? 

A.1. I agree with President Fisher. Removing supervision and regulation of gigantic banks outside their home district reduces the special privileges that the largest banks get from their Federal Reserve Banks. I do not believe that Governor Tarullo or the Federal 

Reserve Board is the proper place to house regulatory oversight. 

From the start of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, the board 

has been regarded as the most political part of the system. That 

is more true now than in the past. 

Regulation and supervision come closest to the public interest if 

the regulators are disinterested technicians applying known, preannounced standards. 

Q.2. Recent proposals have called for certain reforms of the Federal 

Reserve System. Do you support individual proposals listed below, 

and if so, what is the best way to implement such changes? If you 

do not support an individual proposal listed below, please explain 

why and provide any feedback you may have on how better to implement the intent of such proposal. Please note that some of the 

proposal listed below are mutually exclusive and provide your opinion on each proposal individually, and not in the aggregate. If you 

believe that certain proposals work better in combination with another proposal or proposals, please explain how and why. 

Reduce the number of Federal Reserve districts from 12 to 5. 

73 

A.2. No. I Oppose. There is rarely clarity about the condition of the 

economy at or near turning points. The district banks bring information to the FOMC meeting that they gather from business, 

labor, and other interested parties. Such information is very useful. 

Fewer Federal Reserve districts would deprive decision makers of 

accurate regional information. 

Q.3. Remove the requirement that the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York president have a permanent seat on the FOMC. 

A.3. The banking act of 1935 specified that the NY bank was not 

a permanent member of FOMC. Its vote alternated with Boston. In 

practice, however, Boston allowed NY to have the vote at every 

meeting. In 1942 the rules were changed to make NY the permanent member. 

The NY bank stays very close to developments in the money and 

securities markets. The FOMC values that information. 

If the Banking Committees adopted and congress legislated a 

rule, there would be less attention to the money market. A major 

benefit would be reduced attention to current events and more attention to medium-term changes in the economy. That is what happened when Alan Greenspan more or less followed the Taylor Rule. 

It gave us the longest period of low inflation, stable growth, and 

short, mild recessions in Federal Reserve history. 

If a rule is adopted, the NY bank would be less ‘‘special’’ and 

more like other reserve banks. 

Q.4. Rotate the Vice Chairmanship of the FOMC position among 

all Federal Reserve Banks on the FOMC every 2 years. 

A.4. I do not think it matters. The vice-chair has no special authority. 

Q.5. Make the Presidents of all Federal Reserve Banks voting 

members on the FOMC. 

A.5. I favor that and have proposed it in the past. It gives more 

weight to developments affecting the general public and less to the 

financial markets. That was the initial practice. The board of governors did not even participate in the decions until the 1930s. In 

the 1920s, the board could only veto decisions about open market 

operations made by the reserve banks. 

Q.6. Remove the trading desk from the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York to a lower cost district. 

A.6. Not useful. The principal market is in NY and is likely to remain there. The regional bank would be forced to cooperate with 

NY. 

Q.7. Make the New York Fed President a Presidentially nominated 

and Senate-confirmed position. 

A.7. No. That would increase political influence and reduce independence, I prefer steps to make the Federal Reserve (1) more 

independent and (2) more accountable to the Congress for its actions, good or bad. 

Q.8. Require press conferences following each FOMC meeting. 

A.8. Useful requirement to provide regular information. 

74 

Q.9. Shorten lag time for the release of the FOMC transcripts, and 

if so, please explain what an appropriate timeframe is. 

A.9. The timing of releases has been shortened considerably in the 

recent past. The current schedule seems fine to me. 

Q.10. Codify and clarify the application of FOMC blackout period 

(i.e., prohibiting Federal Reserve Governors and officials from 

speaking in public on any matter during the week prior to a FOMC 

meeting and immediately following an FOMC meeting, which is 

known as the FOMC blackout period). 

A.10. This is a way to prevent leaks and tips to the market or individuals. 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR VITTER 

FROM ALLAN H. MELTZER 

Q.1. Dr. Meltzer, in 2009 at a Banking Committee hearing titled 

‘‘Establishing a Framework for Systemic Risk Regulation’’, [July 

23, 2009] former Senator, Chris Dodd, asked you based on your 

study of the Federal Reserve’s history do you see the bank supervisory role as critical to its monetary policy and function? 

You replied, ‘‘No sir and the staff has told them many times it 

is really unrelated. I mean. They can get the information from the 

other agencies. The reason I believe. The reason the Fed wants supervisory authority is it wants a coalition of people to protect itself 

against pressures that comes from the Administration and Congress. It wants people that know about the Fed and wants to protect its monetary policy responsibilities and they’ve used it in that 

way, and in one time in the history the Committee your Committee 

got very angry at Chairman Burns because of the extent in which 

he used that mechanism to protect himself against something that 

the Congress wanted to do.’’ 

Do you think that statement is any less true today, that the Fed 

wants supervisory authority to protect itself from pressures that 

come from the Administration and Congress? 

A.1. Probably truer because there is more concern and difference 

of opinion in the Congress and the Administration. The Federal Reserve has acted as an agent of the Administration especially with 

respect to the debt. 

Q.2. If bank supervisory authority is removed from the Federal Reserve, do you think that would negatively impact its ability to conduct monetary policy? If so, how could that be remedied? 

A.2. No. Almost surely it would make this claim. In practice it 

would set up regular meetings to get information from the FDIC 

and other agencies. 

A useful rule of thumb says that agencies like the Federal Reserve should have a single mandate, at times, monetary policy and 

financial regulation can be in conflict. A single mandate reduces 

conflict and excuses for making errors. 

75 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF 

CHAIRMAN SHELBY FROM PAUL H. KUPIEC 

Q.1. This past December, both the House and the Senate unanimously passed S. 2270, the Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act to give the Federal Reserve flexibility to not impose bankcentric capital standards on insurers. The Federal Reserve recently 

announced that it will undertake a Quantitative Impact Study to 

determine an appropriate capital regime for insurers. What other 

studies or additional steps should the Federal Reserve take before 

issuing capital rules for insurers? 

A.1. In the language of the Federal Reserve (Fed) (and the Basel 

Bank Supervisors Committee), a Quantitative Impact Study (or 

QIS) means a survey in which a sample of institutions impacted by 

newly proposed regulation are asked to specifically estimate how 

the new regulation will affect their business. The survey questions 

usually take the form of a request for an estimate of how much additional capital (or liquid assets or some other balance sheet factor) 

will be impacted by the proposed regulation. Such surveys have 

been done in the past for changes in bank capital regulations proposed by the Basel Committee and subsequently implemented as a 

regulation in the U.S., often at a more restrictive level than the 

international Basel agreement specifies and without regard to any 

QIS assessment of the potential competitive impacts of the stricter 

U.S. regulation. 

In order to undertake a QIS, the Fed must first propose a capital 

regime for insurers it regulates. Without a capital regime outlined 

in sufficient detail, there can be no meaningful QIS assessment. 

No regulatory capital regime is without shortcomings. Past experience highlights significant flaws in both bank and insurance capital regulations. Still, in any proposed capital regime for insurers, 

the Fed should be required to clearly document the shortcomings 

in the existing insurer capital regime and explain how the Fed’s 

proposed capital regime mitigates the weakness in the exiting capital rules. 

Insurer capital requirements are set to insure that policy holder 

claims can be paid in full in a timely manner. The timeframe for 

meeting policy holder claims differs substantially according to the 

type of insurance sold, and in all cases the payout of insurance 

claims is much slower process than a sudden ‘‘run’’ withdrawal of 

bank deposits. The Fed should be required to explicitly state the 

policy goals associated with its proposed insurance capital regime 

and explain why the regulatory goal needs to be expanded beyond 

ensuring that policy holder interests are protected. 

Unlike for banks, there is no explicit Federal Government safety 

net for insurers and no body of empirical evidence that finds that 

large insurers receive a ‘‘safety net funding subsidy.’’ The AIG bailout—multiple Government bailouts actually—were initiated by the 

Federal Reserve and later joined by the U.S. Treasury. These bailouts provide the sole historical example to support the argument 

that large FSOC-designated insurers require heighten capital regulation because they enjoy an implicit Government safety net guarantee because of their ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’ status. 

Dodd-Frank Act supporters simultaneously argue that because 

the Act removes the Fed’s Section 13 powers for firm-specific bailVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
76 

outs and simultaneously creates a new Title II Orderly Liquidation 

Authority, the Act has ended too-big-to-fail by making governmentassisted liquidation a possibility for any large financial firm. If the 

later claim is true, too-big-to-fail insurers no longer exist and it is 

unclear why the Federal Reserve needs any supervisory authority 

over large insurers, or what goals supplemental insurer capital regulation is intended to accomplish. 

The Fed should also be required to explain how the proposed 

changes in the capital regime will reduce the possibility that the 

failure of a large FSOC-designated insurer will cause wider financial instability. It should be required to provide solid empirical evidence that the benefits of the proposed capital regime changes outweigh costs on consumers. 

The Fed should release for public comment its proposed capital 

regime for insurers and revise the plan based on public, industry, 

State insurance commissioners, and Congressional reactions before 

undertaking a QIS study. 

Q.2. The Federal Reserve is a key voice at the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS). The IAIS is currently developing global capital standards for international insurance companies, which would apply to U.S. insurers designated as SIFIs. 

What specific steps should the Federal Reserve take to ensure U.S. 

interests are properly represented internationally and that any 

such international agreements appropriately address the needs of 

U.S. insurance companies? 

A.2. In the U.S., insurance is underwritten and capitalized at the 

State level according to State regulations, most of which are in conformity with NAIC standards. Insurance company solvency problems, should they occur, are handled at the State level. 

From time to time, this State-centric approach to insurance regulation has come under attack by legislators who prefer centralized 

insurance regulation and the establishment of a Federal insurance 

regulatory authority. To date, all efforts to establish a centralized 

insurance regulatory agency have been defeated, including most recently in the Dodd-Frank Act. This State-centric approach to capital, industry conduct and insurance rate regulation has proven to 

be resilient. It has not been a source of systemic risk for the U.S. 

financial sector. 

The U.S. Congress has never explicitly designated the Federal 

Reserve as the national insurance regulator or empowered the Fed 

to negotiate international regulatory capital agreements on behalf 

of State insurance regulators. The Federal Reserve has unilaterally 

taken on this authority. Unless the Congress asserts its power to 

either: (1) specifically empower the Fed to represent the U.S. in 

these negotiations, imposing appropriate guidelines and restrictions; or, (2) prohibit the Fed from negotiating an international 

capital agreement on insurance; and, (3) appoint an alternative 

U.S. representative for these international insurance negotiations 

with explicit Congressional authorization, guidelines, and restrictions, the Congress will de facto be recognizing the Fed as the national insurance regulator. 

Q.3. Estimates suggest the Fed is the consolidated supervisor for 

a third of the insurance industry’s assets vis-a-vis its supervision 

77 

of insurance companies that have insurance savings and loan holding companies, as well as companies designated by FSOC. What 

are the benefits and shortcomings, if any, of having the Federal Reserve supervise and regulate insurance companies compared to 

State insurance commissioners? 

A.3. The issue of Federal regulation of the insurance industry periodically surfaces. Arguments in favor of Federal regulation suggest 

that State insurance regulation tends to be underfunded, understaffed, and easily captured by the insurance industry. There is 

probably some truth to these claims, but investigations into consumer complaints about industry conduct, and not issues of insurer 

financial solvency, tend to be the supervision areas most restricted 

by State regulatory underfunding. 

In contrast, the Federal Reserve is fabulously well-funded and 

overstaffed. The Fed has proven to be difficult to control, even by 

the U.S. Congress, and so it is a good bet that it would be difficult 

for the Fed to be easily ‘‘captured’’ by the insurance industry. 

Technically, the Fed has little experience in insurance regulation, 

but since it pays its employees far better than any U.S. Government or State regulatory agency, with time, it could buy the insurance staff necessary to discharge any insurance supervision function. Fed examinations are also likely to become more standardized 

over time than the State insurance examinations conducted by the 

separate State regulators. Given the Federal Reserve pay scale and 

resource deployed, Federal Reserve examinations are likely to be 

much more expensive. However, since the Fed does not charge for 

examinations, the cost will be borne by U.S. taxpayers through 

high Federal Reserve operating expenses and smaller surpluses returned to the U.S. Treasury. 

While there is little doubt in my mind that the Fed would spend 

far more on the supervision and regulation of the insurance firms 

within its jurisdiction compared to State insurance regulators, 

there is little evidence that a significant increase in resources devoted to insurer supervision is justified. The increase in taxpayer 

expense would not facilitate a measureable improvements in financial system stability, increase the certainty of payment on insurer 

claims, reduce contingent taxpayer liability for future insurer bailouts, or otherwise improve the prospects for economic growth. 

Recent developments suggest that the Fed views insurance regulation as a special subset of bank regulation. Reports suggest that 

the Fed has decided that the depository institution must always be 

the recipient of any and all assistance from parent holding companies even when the holding company is dominated by insurance 

subsidiaries. When insurance subsidiaries appear weakly capitalized by bank regulatory measures, holding companies can thus be 

required to raise capital so that they can be in a position to support 

the depository subsidiary if needed, even when the insurance subsidiaries satisfy State regulatory insurance capital requirements. 

The mixture of insurance and bank capital regulatory approaches 

is proving problematic as insurance companies end up being subjected to bank minimum capital standards. 

If the insurance industry faces two different sets of capital standards—one imposed by State insurance regulation, and the other 

imposed by the Fed using bank regulatory capital standards as an 

78 

overlay on State insurance regulation—then one group of insurers 

will be at a competitive disadvantage regarding the costs of its policies or the return it offers to its shareholders. 

Q.4. The Federal Reserve was granted some oversight authority by 

Congress over insurance holding companies with depository institution subsidiaries. Because of the added regulatory burden, many 

relatively small regional insurers with small community banks or 

thrifts have been divesting their thrifts over the last few years, depriving consumers of the benefits provided by insurers affiliated 

with banks. What steps has the Federal Reserve taken to ensure 

that its regulations are properly tailored to fit these unique insurers and do not undermine their business models? 

A.4. I am not aware of any adjustments that the Federal Reserve 

has made in an attempt to tailor its supervision processes or regulations to reduce regulatory burden so that regulation expenses are 

commensurate with the financial system risks posed by small insurers affiliated with depository institutions. 

Q.5. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that much of the 

authority previously delegated to the New York Fed to oversee the 

many of the Nation’s largest banks has been, in effect, revoked and 

given to a secret committee run by Governor Tarullo. One of Dallas 

Fed President Fisher’s proposals calls for moving supervision of a 

‘‘systemically important’’ bank to a district outside where that bank 

is based in order to address the potential for regulatory capture. Is 

it better to centralize control of systemic regulation at the Board 

of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or rotate it among Federal Reserve Banks? 

A.5. The Dodd-Frank Act places the responsibility for enhanced supervision of large bank holding companies and FSOC-designated 

nonbank financial institutions on the Federal Reserve Board. 

Unless the Reserve Banks were given explicit new autonomy 

from the Federal Reserve Board, moving responsibility for enhance 

supervision of SIFIs to a Reserve Bank would probably not accomplish very much. The Federal Reserve Board would still try to control the process given that it is the part of the Federal Reserve that 

most accountable to Congress. Moreover, giving unelected Reserve 

Bank presidents who are not directly accountable to Congress this 

much new authority seems unwise and inconsistent with our system of Government. 

Q.6. Recent proposals have called for certain reforms of the Federal 

Reserve System. Do you support individual proposals listed below, 

and if so, what is the best way to implement such changes? If you 

do not support an individual proposal listed below, please explain 

why and provide any feedback you may have on how better to implement the intent of such proposal. Please note that some of the 

proposals listed below are mutually exclusive and provide your 

opinion on each proposal individually, and not in the aggregate. If 

you believe that certain proposals work better in combination with 

another proposal or proposals, please explain how and why. 

Reduce the number of Federal Reserve districts from 12 to 5; 

A.6. There is no economic or political justification for 12 Federal 

Reserve districts. Five would suffice. 

79 

Q.7. Remove the requirement that the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York President have a permanent seat on the FOMC; 

A.7. Yes. 

Q.8. Rotate the Vice Chairmanship of the FOMC position among 

all Federal Reserve Banks on the FOMC every 2 years; 

A.8. Yes. 

Q.9. Make the Presidents of all Federal Reserve Banks voting 

members on the FOMC; 

A.9. Yes, especially if there the number of FR districts are reduced 

to 5. 

Q.10. Remove the trading desk from the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York to a lower cost district; 

A.10. The trading desk does not need to be in New York given 

modern communications technology. 

Q.11. Make the New York Fed President a Presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed position; 

A.11. No, so long as the special status of NY Fed president are rescinded. 

Q.12. Require press conferences following each FOMC meeting; 

A.12. No opinion. 

Q.13. Shorten lag time for the release of the FOMC transcripts, 

and if so, please explain what an appropriate timeframe is; 

A.13. No opinion. 

Q.14. Codify and clarify the application of FOMC blackout period 

(i.e., prohibiting Federal Reserve Governors and officials from 

speaking in public on any matter during the week prior to a FOMC 

meeting and immediately following an FOMC meeting, which is 

known as the FOMC blackout period). 

A.14. No opinion. 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR VITTER 

FROM PAUL H. KUPIEC 

Q.1. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing in 2009 on ‘‘Establishing a Framework for Systemic Risk Regulation’’, former Chairman Chris Dodd asked Dr. Meltzer based on his study of the Federal Reserve’s history if he saw the bank supervisory role as critical 

to its monetary policy and function. 

Dr. Meltzer responded, ‘‘No sir and the staff has told them many 

times it is really unrelated. I mean. They can get the information 

from the other agencies. The reason I believe. The reason the Fed 

wants supervisory authority is it wants a coalition of people to protect itself against pressures that comes from the Administration 

and Congress. It wants people that know about the Fed and wants 

to protect its monetary policy responsibilities and they’ve used it in 

that way, and in one time in the history the committee your committee got very angry at Chairman Burns because of the extent in 

which he used that mechanism to protect himself against something that the Congress wanted to do.’’ 

Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Meltzer, and why? 

80 

If bank supervisory authority is removed from the Federal Reserve, do you think that would negatively impact its ability to conduct monetary policy? If so, how could that be remedied? 

A.1. I agree with Dr. Meltzer. There are no compelling economic 

reasons why the Federal Reserve needs bank supervisory authority 

to carry out monetary policy. The Federal Reserve would be able 

to learn anything it needed to know about the condition of the 

banking system by merely asking a separate bank supervisory 

agency. 

In the past, the Fed has maintained that it required supervisory 

powers over bank holding companies in large part so it could have 

supervisory jurisdiction over large national banks. There is really 

no need for multiple bank regulators, and Fed’s post Dodd-Frank 

regulatory activities are a major threat to its ‘‘independence.’’ The 

Congress must clearly exercise more intrusive oversight over an institution that now routinely makes operating decisions for the largest banks. Decisions that used to be routinely made by banks’ directors must garner Fed approval on all banking institutions larger 

than $50 billion. 

Increasingly, the Fed is supporting its sustained 0-interest rate 

policy by using its new Dodd-Frank enhanced supervisory powers. 

The Fed is worried that 0 rates have sparked financial bubbles and 

so the Fed now tells banks which type of investments are ‘‘sound’’ 

and which are ‘‘too risky.’’ The Fed calls this ‘‘macroprudential policy,’’ but it comes very close to central planning. 

Using the justification of macroprudential policy, the Fed is essentially arguing that it can keep the monetary accelerator to the 

floor if only it is allowed to control the investments banks make. 

Moreover, senior Fed officials are publically claiming that they 

need to extend this control to ‘‘shadow banks’’ which is really code 

for the rest of the financial sector. In fact, the Fed has already 

agreed to this strategy which is being planned by the Financial 

Stability Board. The Fed is now exerting pressure to discourage 

certain types of lending—in essence, approving which investments 

banks should make and which they must avoid, and it wants to extend this power to nonbank financial institutions. 

This macroprudential policy experiment can only end badly, since 

history has demonstrated time and again, that the Fed’s crystal 

ball has a bad case of myopia. Fed control over bank and other financial firm investments will either produce prolonged sluggish 

growth as banks and ‘‘shadow banks’’ are required to avoid sound 

high return investments because the Fed sees them as too risky, 

or it will end with large financial sector losses because the Fed will 

fail to identify and stop a financial bubble before the economic 

damage is done. The probability the Fed will have the foresight 

and judgement to engineer a ‘‘goldilocks path’’ is about 0. 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR HELLER 

FROM PAUL H. KUPIEC 

Q.1. The Federal Reserve is increasingly more involved in international negotiations on financial regulations. In the United States 

we have a very unique banking and insurance structure compared 

to Europe. Yet, more and more we are hearing about the Financial 

81 

Stability Board and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. A prevalence of groupthink is starting to develop among 

the world’s financial regulators with the Federal Reserve often 

being a participant in these negotiations. 

How can we have greater oversight over international negotiations and should there be more public disclosures and reports before and after Federal Reserve officials engage in international negotiations? 

A.1. Groupthink is an especially important problem that has been 

created by international regulatory agreements. For example, the 

Basel Market Risk Amendment and Basel II credit risk requirements substantially lowered bank capital requirements intentionally, as a reward, to get banks to adopt a new system of economic model-based capital requirements. International regulators— 

including (and indeed especially) the Federal Reserve—were very 

clear when they were finalizing the Basel II. Their claim was that 

the safety and soundness of large banks would be improved by allowing banks to use internal model based capital requirements to 

replace the prior Basel Accord regime of fixed risk weights. International regulators claimed that, because these new model-based 

capital requirements better aligned bank risk with minimum capital requirements, the large banks that adopted the new capital 

scheme could operate with lower capital levels because the appropriate capital was calculated more accurately. 

All the international bank regulators bought into the talking 

point that lower bank capital was appropriate given the new risksensitive capital rules. And shortly after Basel II was finalized in 

2006, the folly of this regulatory groupthink was revealed as many 

large internationally active banks that adopted the Basel II modelbased capital requirements required capital injections from their 

Governments. The regulators’ talking points after the crisis 

claimed that the Basel II capital requirement approach really was 

solution to the problems of the crisis—and not the cause—and what 

the world needed was of this type of regulation to ensure a crisis 

never happened again. 

The real truth behind the crisis was that Basel II and the Market Risk Amendments were riddled with errors and mistakes that 

allowed banks to hold very little capital for extremely risky positions. Regulators never owned up to their mistakes, but instead 

modified the rules to produce a newer even more complex Basel III 

capital agreement, and in the process fixed the mistakes that the 

crisis revealed in the earlier Basel II and Market Risk Amendment 

rules without ever admitting as much in public. 

The capacity for regulators to agree to flawed international regulatory and supervisory policies and succumb to groupthink errors 

has not diminished since the crisis. For example, the new Basel III 

international agreement requires large banks to meet a so-called 

Liquidity Coverage Ratio (or LCR). The LCR has had the unintended consequence of making it unprofitable for banks to accept 

large deposits from nonbank financial institutions while interest 

rates are near zero (actually negative in some countries). Indeed 

many banks in Europe, and now increasingly banks in the U.S. are 

charging very large negative interest rates on financial institution 

deposits to encourage these deposits to leave the bank. What is the 

82 

point of a banking system if it cannot afford to accept deposits? 

And yet this is the situation today, and it is the new international 

bank regulations that are forcing liquidity out of the banking system into nonbank financial institutions. 

Already the Federal Reserve is arguing publically that they need 

extended regulatory jurisdiction over ‘‘shadow banks’’ so they can 

try to chase the liquidity leaving the banking system and regulate 

it elsewhere. 

Financial regulations have become increasingly complex. Consequently these regulations are difficult to assess and monitor. This 

complexity hinders Congressional oversight and works to further 

empower the Federal Reserve. However difficult, without strong 

Congressional oversight, the Fed becomes an unaccountable while 

it is increasingly acting like central planner as it develops new regulations that allocate credit and investment in the economy. 

Financial regulations have important impacts on the savings and 

investment decisions of millions of Americans consumers and business with ramifications that ultimately negatively impact the 

growth rate of the American economy. I unaware of any historical 

instance when the introduction of new complex and extensive financial regulations caused an increase in economic growth. 

Effective oversight will require the Congress to be vigilant in 

asking for information and holding regular hearings on the Fed’s 

international regulatory activities. Following the idea of a Bill introduced in the House last summer, the Congress might require 

the Fed to make prior notification to Congress before attending 

international meetings and include a briefing on the materials and 

issues to be covered. The Bill would also require the Fed to provide 

Congressional Committees with a summary of agreements and discussions following the international meeting. 

Additionally, Congress might consider passing legislation to limit 

the Fed’s involvement in these negotiations by, for example, restricting the Fed’s authority to banking issues and prohibit it from 

representing the U.S. in international insurance regulatory negotiations. 

The current situation leaves the Fed with tremendous power over 

international financial regulatory developments—powers that 

should reside in the U.S. Congress. Such a concentration of power 

in an independent agency that is only weakly accountable to Congress is not a recipe for good Government. The Congress should 

empower a different agent to represent the U.S. in international insurance regulatory negotiations and step up monitoring of the Feds 

international participation in other Financial Stability Board and 

Basel Banking Supervision Committee negotiations. 

Q.2. The Federal Reserve is a member of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and is actively participating in 

the creation of insurance capital standards for internationally active insurance companies. 

Do you believe the Federal Reserve should advocate for the U.S. 

State insurance system, which performed well in the financial crisis, to be recognized by other jurisdictions as one way to comply 

with the IAIS insurance capital standard or do you believe that 

State insurance solvency standards should be preempted by Federal application of some version of the IAIS standards? 

83 

A.2. Unless the Congress wishes to empower the Federal Reserve 

as the de facto U.S. national insurance regulator, the Congress 

should explicitly empower an agent other than the Federal Reserve 

as the recognized U.S. representative in IAIS capital negotiations. 

If Congress does nothing, the Fed will fill the role of national insurance regulator. 

If Congress decides to empower the Fed as the recognized U.S. 

IAIS representative, then it should move quickly to put restrictions 

on this power and create a system for oversight and monitoring the 

Fed’s exercise of this power. 

My own opinion is that this insurance regulation power should 

not be concentrated in the Federal Reserve. 

Q.3. Shortly after the Federal Reserve joined the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), the IAIS voted behind 

closed doors to shut out public observers, including consumer 

groups, from most of their meetings. 

Do you believe that the Federal Reserve should be committed to 

being transparent in its operations, and support allowing the public 

to observe the IAIS meetings in the same way Congress—and this 

Committee—does with its hearings and markups? 

A.3. Transparency is important and could be achieved by either 

opening up the IAIS meetings themselves, or by requiring the Federal Reserve or other congressionally appointed U.S. representative 

to the IAIS, to provide a full and timely accounting of each meeting, including a summary of all discussions and agreements, to the 

appropriate Congressional subcommittee and on a publically accessible Web site. 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF 

CHAIRMAN SHELBY FROM PETER CONTI–BROWN 

Q.1. Recent proposals have called for certain reforms of the Federal 

Reserve System. Do you support individual proposals listed below, 

and if so, what is the best way to implement such changes? If you 

do not support an individual proposal listed below, please explain 

why and provide any feedback you may have on how better to implement the intent of such proposal. Please note that some of the 

proposal listed below are mutually exclusive and provide your opinion on each proposal individually, and not in the aggregate. If you 

believe that certain proposals work better in combination with another proposal or proposals, please explain how and why. 

Reduce the number of Federal Reserve districts from 12 to 5. 

A.1. I’m not exactly sure what this proposal would accomplish. I 

support making the governance of the Federal Reserve System—especially at the Federal Reserve Banks—more transparent to the 

public. By ‘‘governance,’’ I mean the selection of the directors and 

officers of the Reserve Banks. By ‘‘transparent,’’ I mean making the 

process by which the directors and officers are selected subject to 

greater public participation. I favor making the directors of the Reserve Banks purely advisory, and the presidents of the Reserve 

Banks appointed and removable by the Fed’s Board of Governors. 

Reducing the number of Federal Reserve districts eliminates 

some of the influence of the Reserve Banks, but simply conVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
84 

centrates that influence in the other five districts. The governance 

problems in the remaining five districts would remain unchanged. 

Q.2. Remove the requirement that the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York President have a permanent seat on the FOMC. 

A.2. I favor this proposal. Doing so would require a change to 12 

U.S.C. §263(a) and would add the New York Fed into one of the 

rotations followed by the other Reserve Banks. 

Q.3. Rotate the Vice Chairmanship of the FOMC position among 

all Federal Reserve Banks on the FOMC every 2 years. 

A.3. In our digital age, when the physical transfer of cash, gold, 

and securities plays a much smaller role in the supervision of the 

financial and payment system, the justification for the New York 

Fed’s Vice Chairmanship no longer exists. In the previous era, 

given the concentration of financial services in the second district 

(where the New York Fed sits), this prominence made more sense. 

But I’m not sure rotating the Vice Chairmanship among Reserve 

Banks actually makes sense, for much the same reason. The Reserve Banks themselves don’t serve the vital physical delivery process that they once served in the operation of our financial system. 

All respect to these great cities, but it’s unclear to me why Richmond or Cleveland or Kansas City should have enhanced representation in the formulation of our monetary policy. 

A better solution would be toward simplifying, rather than complicating, the governance structure of the Fed by making the Vice 

Chair of the FOMC and the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors 

one in the same. The current Vice Chair of the Board of Governors 

is an eminent economist and central banker, Stanley Fischer. But 

his most important qualification is this: the U.S. President nominated him, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him. The public had a 

chance to participate in his vetting and confirmation process. The 

same cannot be said for any of the Reserve Bank presidents. 

Q.4. Make the Presidents of all Federal Reserve Banks voting 

members on the FOMC. 

A.4. I oppose this proposal. Given the problematic governance 

structure of the Reserve Banks, their enhanced participation on the 

FOMC would only dilute appropriate congressional control over the 

staffing of our monetary policy. While I do not support efforts to 

impose more congressional control on the day-to-day of monetary 

policy, I do support efforts to impose more congressional control on 

who gets to wield this authority in the first place. Extending the 

Reserve Banks’ participation on the FOMC is a move in the wrong 

direction. 

Q.5. Remove the trading desk from the Federal Reserve Bank of 

New York to a lower cost district. 

A.5. This is a very practical proposal. Again, the costs of market 

interventions are not what they were in the era when the FRBNY 

was given its pride of place. 

That said, there will be transition costs in moving the trading 

desk, in terms of institutional knowledge lost in the transfer (I assume not all FRBNY personnel would be willing to relocate). Even 

so, these costs would not be permanent. Before endorsing this proposal definitively, I would want to quantify the costs associated 

85 

with this transition and measure them against the savings of the 

relocation. I imagine the costs would be relatively minor in comparison to the savings. 

Q.6. Make the New York Fed President a Presidentially nominated 

and Senate-confirmed position. 

A.6. This proposal focuses on exactly the right issue: making the 

Reserve Bank presidents more accountable to the democratic process, without erasing the benefits of a central bank insulated from 

the political process. The current selection, appointment, and removal procedures for the Reserve Bank presidents raise policy and 

even constitutional concerns that the Congress should address. 

Even so, I don’t support this proposal, for two reasons. First, it 

does nothing to the other 11 Reserve Banks. Their governance 

problems are just as significant, even if the New York Fed’s district 

is home to the some of the Nation’s largest financial institutions. 

Leaving the Reserve Banks’ governance untouched beyond New 

York would be problematic. 

Second, and ironically, giving the New York Fed a presidential 

appointment may make the New York Fed more independent of the 

rest of the System, and potentially more dependent on the financial 

industry in New York. If the New York Fed president is a presidential appointment, she will become the focus of extraordinary 

lobbying efforts. If the industry succeeds in placing a friendly regulator in its backyard, efforts from elsewhere in the System—principally from the Board of Governors—to be a more critical regulator 

could be thwarted. A presidential appointment might give the 

FRBNY an independent power base that could lead to great confusion within the System. 

In its place, I recommend placing all Reserve Bank appointments 

(and their removal) in the hands of the Board of Governors. 

Q.7. Require press conferences following each FOMC meeting. 

A.7. I like this proposal very much. We learned a lot from the 

March 18, 2015, press conference. It provides a mechanism for the 

Fed Chair to communicate through the press in a way that is less 

scripted than press releases and less overtly political than congressional hearings. The Fed has been moving toward press conferences 

in the last decade; I would like to see this become a matter of practice. 

Q.8. Shorten lag time for the release of the FOMC transcripts, and 

if so, please explain what an appropriate timeframe is. 

A.8. I favor the 5-year lag. It gives enough time to insulate, at least 

to some extent, the day-to-day monetary policy the Fed from becoming too intensely connected to a quadrennial election cycle. 

Q.9. Codify and clarify the application of FOMC blackout period 

(i.e., prohibiting Federal Reserve Governors and officials from 

speaking in public on any matter during the week prior to a FOMC 

meeting and immediately following an FOMC meeting, which is 

known as the FOMC blackout period). 

A.9. The blackout period is, at present, clearly stated: ‘‘The blackout period will begin at midnight Eastern Time seven days before 

the beginning of the meeting . . . and will end at midnight Eastern 

Time on the next day after the meeting.’’ With many others, I anxVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:24 Dec 21, 2015 Jkt 046629 PO 00000 Frm 00089 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 L:\HEARINGS 2015\03-03 FEDERAL RESERVE ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORM\HEARIN
86 

iously await the Fed’s Inspector General report on FOMC leaks to 

understand better how that leak occurred and what measures, if 

any, should be taken to prevent them in the future. 

RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR VITTER 

FROM PETER CONTI–BROWN 

Q.1. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing in 2009 on ‘‘Establishing a Framework for Systemic Risk Regulation’’, former Chairman Chris Dodd asked Dr. Meltzer based on his study of the Federal Reserve’s history if he saw the bank supervisory role as critical 

to its monetary policy and function. 

Dr. Meltzer responded, ‘‘No sir and the staff has told them many 

times it is really unrelated. I mean. They can get the information 

from the other agencies. The reason I believe. The reason the Fed 

wants supervisory authority is it wants a coalition of people to protect itself against pressures that comes from the Administration 

and Congress. It wants people that know about the Fed and wants 

to protect its monetary policy responsibilities and they’ve used it in 

that way, and in one time in the history the Committee your Committee got very angry at Chairman Burns because of the extent in 

which he used that mechanism to protect himself against something that the Congress wanted to do.’’ 

Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Meltzer, and why? 

A.1. I agree with Dr. Meltzer that, historically, much of the banking supervisory apparatus has come to the Fed in ways completely 

disconnected from its role in monetary policy. As I document in my 

forthcoming book, the Fed was agnostic regarding its selection as 

the regulator for Bank Holding Companies in 1956, and hostile to 

the role it was given in regulating the Truth in Lending Act (now 

the purview of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). These 

functions were not seen by the Fed—rightly, I think—as essential 

to its monetary missions. 

And several Administrations, from both parties, have sought to 

consolidate banking regulation in the hands of a single, non-Fed 

regulator. For example, Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, 

and George W. Bush all proposed this kind of supervisory consolidation of functions that are currently spread across the executive 

and independent agencies. 

I am less certain than Dr. Meltzer that the Fed can appropriately 

formulate and implement traditional central banking functions 

without retaining regulatory and supervisory authority over systemically important financial institutions. The problem is in the 

appropriate deployment of emergency lending authority, sometimes 

broadly called the ‘‘lender of last resort function.’’ There is a central 

tension in the use of the central bank (or Government, or any other 

authority) as a lender of last resort. On the one hand, the central 

bank must be available when all other lending avenues have failed 

to secure and support the financial system. On the other, if banks 

know that the central bank will provide whatever liquidity is necessary to save them in the event of crisis, the banks will not take 

appropriate measures to avoid the crisis in the first place. This is 

the ‘‘moral hazard’’ problem that was so central to discussions of 

the recent financial crisis and the Fed’s response to it. 

87 

If the Fed retains its emergency lending authority, but loses the 

regulatory authority over those who would use that emergency 

lending authority, the risk of moral hazard is extraordinary. It is 

not simply an information-sharing problem, as Dr. Meltzer described. The Fed must be in a position to regulate and supervise 

financial institutions with an eye toward preventing financial crises before they start, followed by appropriately stringent regulatory 

controls over the use of emergency lending funds in the event of 

crisis, and postcrisis repayment in ways that do not exacerbate 

moral hazard. For these reasons, I fear that stripping the Fed of 

all its regulatory authority would make financial crises more likely, 

not less likely. 

That said, this conception of the Fed’s regulatory authority applies to its supervision of the largest financial institutions. It does 

not apply to others. I am in favor of a consolidation of financial regulatory authority for other institutions into a single agency, similar 

to the Clinton and George W. Bush proposals. 

Q.2. If bank supervisory authority is removed from the Federal Reserve, do you think that would negatively impact its ability to conduct monetary policy? If so, how could that be remedied? 

A.2. See above for the discussion of emergency lending. 

88 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUPPLIED FOR THE RECORD

CHART OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SURVEY OF CONSUMER 

FINANCES, SUBMITTED BY SENATOR BROWN 

89 

TESTIMONY OF RON PAUL, CHAIRMAN, CAMPAIGN FOR LIBERTY 

90 

91