Everything You Want to Know About the Federal Reserve with Jeanna Smialek

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes New York Times Federal Reserve reporter Jeanna Smialek. Let’s face it, the Federal Reserve (not a prison), is a public-private partnership that’s a little hard to understand. What’s its history? Why do they make the decisions they make–like to raise interest rates–and how do those decisions impact our economy? How much power do they have over financial policy? Jeanna answers these questions with easy-to-understand explanations.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey friends, welcome. So glad you're here with me today. Let me tell you, I get more questions
0:12.0	about things related to the economy that almost anything else. And I think one of the reasons
0:18.6	for that is because it is kind of obscure, kind of difficult to understand, but it is
0:24.2	something that impacts our daily lives. So my guest today is Gina Smilak, who is a New York Times
0:33.9	reporter. She covers the Fed and she's a new book out called Limitless about the Federal Reserve.
0:40.6	So today we are going to talk all about inflation, all about the Federal Reserve, all about certain
0:46.2	aspects of the economy. And I think you are really going to get so much out of this. So let's dive in.
0:51.1	I'm Sharon McBam and here's where it gets interesting. I am very excited to be chatting with Gina today.
1:03.4	You write so clearly. You communicate so clearly, so understandably, on topics related to the
1:11.8	broader economy, but really your specialty is talking about the Federal Reserve. So thanks for
1:17.1	being here. Yeah, thank you for having me. I know people are curious about the Federal Reserve,
1:22.7	even if they don't know that they are, because these topics about things like inflation impact
1:31.2	their daily lives, inflation is a kitchen table issue for people. So in order to really dive into
1:37.9	the Fed, I would love to start with a conversation about first of all, what even is it? We can't just
1:43.9	assume that everyone knows what the Federal Reserve is. So can you help us understand what is the Fed?
1:49.2	I regularly talk to people who think that the Federal Reserve is a prison. So it is not a prison.
1:54.2	Oh snap, a prison. It isn't. It isn't. It isn't. It isn't. It isn't. It is not a prison.
2:00.9	The Federal Reserve is America Central Bank. I like to think of it in the modern era as sort of the
2:05.8	central organizing body for all things macroeconomic. So when you think about sort of the big trends that
2:13.6	shape our daily lives, including how hot the labor market is and how hot inflation is. Those are
2:19.5	sort of the Fed's two big domains and they shape those outcomes by trying to sort of work in financial
2:27.1	markets to make money either more expensive or less expensive to borrow. And so if they look around
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