Podcast series: The Chair
The Federal Reserve behind closed doors
Listen to the series by clicking on these Spotify links:
This newsletter and most of my podcasts are about Europe but my other long-time professional interest is monetary policy - how and why central banks change financial conditions for households and businesses.
To the uninitiated, this may sound dry. But, while policy can get technical, it can also get personal and political. You don’t have to be a Catholic to enjoy the gamesmanship of papal conclaves or a lawyer to revel in the dark politics of appointments to or decision-making on the US Supreme Court. It’s the same story at the monetary institution I’ve been “watching” since before its creation: the European Central Bank.
However, to mine a rich seam of monetary politics, nothing beats the US Federal Reserve and its Chair of the Board of Governors. The ECB is only a quarter-century old and a book culture is still developing. By contrast, since legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward published Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom in 2001, Fed-watching journalists have been expected to write a well-sourced, fly-on-the-wall account of their years on the beat1.
Because I’m a sucker for this type of book, I planned a four-part podcast series covering the Fed Chairs who have served during my professional life: Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell. I wanted to talk to writers like Jon Hilsenrath and Sebastian Mallaby about their subject but also about the craft of the fly-on-the-wall book. However, while planning this series2, I stumbled across books on the big four Chairs who revolutionised the Fed before Greenspan: Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker.
These fascinating historical biographies by Mark Nelson, Bob Bremner, Wyatt Wells, and Bill Silber are the subject of this series. If you are interested in the Fed, 20th-century US history, or just people and politics, give them a listen.
Podcast production: Emin Fikić
Podcast artwork: Abbie Hutchins-Jones
So far ... In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic by David Wessel (2009), The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby (2016), Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval by Jon Hilsenrath (2022), Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic - and Prevented Economic Disaster by Nick Timiraos (2022), and Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek (2023).