Magazine : Archives : 2nd Quarter 2022

Is the Punch Bowl Empty?

In October 1955, Federal Reserve Chair Bill Martin made perhaps the most famous analogy about the role of the agency, likening it to a “chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up.”  The line actually came from someone else — he says as much in the speech — which focused on inflation and the regulator’s mandate to promote maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. The federal funds rate was 2.24% at that time, higher than the U.S. has seen following more than a decade of predominantly how-low-can-you-go interest rates....