hard to achieve our goals for jobs and inflation. the fomc meets in washington, d. c., eight times per year to deliberate and vote on monetary policy. as new york fed president, i am vice chairman at these meetings and have a permanent vote. at these meetings, the 16 other members ( the board of governors and the other reserve bank presidents ) and i each present our current outlook for the economy. for these assessments, we augment input from our research departments with critical information about local economic conditions supplied by our boards of directors, regional advisory councils and conversations with local stakeholders. you may know that one of my councils, the upstate new york regional advisory board, is designed specifically to provide me with timely information from this area. in this way, decisions by the fomc are continually informed by views gathered from all parts of the country, including upstate new york. one thing that makes my job even more interesting is that new york has some roles unique within the fed. let me tell you about some of them. we, alone, implement monetary policy. at the direction of the fomc, we buy and sell treasury securities. we are also the eyes and ears of the fed on wall street, and we supervise many of the largest financial institutions in the country. we operate fedwire® – the conduit for large money transfers between banks. and, we provide banking services to the u. s. treasury, and central banks and governments from around the world. finally, i must mention that the new york fed ’ s district could be the most diverse in the system : ranging from the urban density of manhattan to the forested sparseness of the northern adirondacks, to the caribbean islands of puerto rico and the virgin islands. all in all, there is a lot to keep my colleagues and me quite busy – even in normal times. the crisis and response of course these are anything but normal times. the financial crisis that broke in mid - 2007 and intensified dramatically following the failure of lehman brothers has been among the most virulent ever. and it was followed by the longest and one of the deepest recessions since world war ii, called by many the “ great recession. ” the fed responded aggressively and creatively in an effort to pursue our dual mandate. our actions fell into two broad buckets. first, we took steps to supply liquidity to the financial system, so that financial markets could continue to function properly and to enable households and businesses to

william c dudley : how goes the recovery? challenges for the nation, the region and the fed remarks by mr william c dudley, president and chief executive officer of the federal reserve bank of new york, at cornell university, ithaca, new york, 25 october 2010. * * * good morning. i am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you as i travel through upstate new york to meet with various communities in the region. this afternoon i will focus on national and regional economic conditions and what the fed is doing about them – with particular attention to the housing sector and to conditions in upstate new york. as always, what i have to say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the federal open market committee ( fomc ) or the federal reserve system. introduction to the new york fed as many of you know, this is my first chance to speak at cornell university since i became president of the new york fed. so, by way of introduction, let me start with a synopsis of what the new york fed is, what we do and what makes my job so interesting. the new york fed is part of the federal reserve system, america ’ s central bank, and was created by congress in 1913. with this act, congress delegated to the fed system its constitutional authority to manage the money supply – and designed it be decentralized, representative of all of america and independent of the political process. the fed system is comprised of the board of governors in washington, d. c. – a federal agency led by chairman ben bernanke – plus 12 autonomous reserve banks that span the country. for example, the district overseen by the new york fed includes all of new york, the 12 northern counties of new jersey ; fairfield county, connecticut ; puerto rico and the u. s. virgin islands. each reserve bank is autonomous, with its own charter and a board of directors drawn from its district, but overseen by the board of governors. the law that created the federal reserve made us independent so we can make decisions in the national interest free from political pressure. however, the fed is accountable to congress. congress has set an explicit objective for monetary policy : to pursue the highest level of employment consistent with price stability. this objective is often referred to as our “ dual mandate, ” because it combines two goals : high employment, and low and stable inflation. in order to promote these objectives, we also pay close attention to financial stability, because without financial stability, it is very