Macroeconomic Policy Instruments - Monetary Policy

Monetary Policy

Monetary policy instruments consists in managing short-term rates (Fed Funds and Discount rates in the U.S.), and changing reserve requirements for commercial banks. Monetary policy can be either expansive for the economy (short-term rates low relative to inflation rate) or restrictive for the economy (short-term rates high relative to inflation rate). Historically, the major objective of monetary policy had been to manage or curb domestic inflation. More recently, central bankers have often focused on a second objective: managing economic growth as both inflation and economic growth are highly interrelated.

Read more about this topic:  Macroeconomic Policy Instruments

Famous quotes containing the words monetary and/or policy:

    In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)