24  Flexibility When Needed: The Technical Adjustment When overnight rates—including rates on federal funds transactions—edge higher, what tools does the Federal Reserve have to ensure that they generally remain within the target range when reserves are abundant? The federal funds target range is an important feature of the FOMC’s public communications, and maintaining control of the federal funds rate and other money market rates is therefore taken quite seriously. Public confidence in our ability to maintain rates within the target range is important for ensuring that expectations for the FOMC’s future policy stance are properly incorporated into the term structure of interest rates, and thereby appropriately affect financial conditions and the broader economy. At the March 2015 joint FOMC Board meeting, it was decided that in a situation of abundant reserves, the Federal Reserve intends to “adjust the IOER rate and the parameters of the ON RRP facility, and use  23 Recent market intelligence supports the notion that increased awareness among some banks of the LCR benefit to borrowing federal funds from FHLBs, even at rates at or slightly above IOR, has contributed to the upward pressure in federal funds rates. For further discussion of the impact of LCR treatment on money markets, see Potter, “Confidence in the Implementation of U.S. Monetary Policy Normalization,” August 4, 2018. 24 While trading volumes among smaller domestic banks have been largely steady since the beginning of normalization, their borrowing rates have increased since March with the rise in the broader constellation of money market rates.

The costs of such failures were enormous, with prices rising by 750% in the twenty-five years to 1992, more than over the previous two hundred and fifty years. Unemployment was high and growth volatile. The inflation target rose from the ashes of the ERM debacle twenty five years ago this month, marking the point when price stability became the unambiguous objective of UK monetary policy. The new framework was a success, though only a partial one. That’s because, with interest rate decisions still made by the Chancellor, it wasn’t fully credible. Experience teaches that political control of monetary policy decisions suffers from time inconsistency, in which policymakers promise low inflation, then go for faster growth and ultimately achieve neither. Conversely, welfare can be improved if governments first choose the preferred rate of inflation and then delegate operational responsibility to the central bank to achieve it. 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  2  The UK Framework for Monetary Independence So it was in 1997 when Gordon Brown boldly gave the Bank of England operational control for setting monetary policy. The Bank of England Act of 1998 clarified – for the first time in three centuries – the Bank’s responsibilities. 1  It gave a new independent body of the Bank, the MPC, a clear remit to achieve the inflation target over the medium term. The inflation target is symmetric (meaning we care as much about returning inflation to target from below as from above), and it applies at all times.