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This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 21st, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How private are banks that receive special privileges from the feds.

What was the problem the Federal Reserve was created to

solve in the first place? Jeffrey Lacker is the most recent former head of the

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. We spoke at the Cato Institute's

Monetary Conference last month.

For people who are only aware of the Federal Reserve as this sort of, I don't know,

it's sort of distant institution that does a bunch of things that we don't know, we don't really follow, most people don't follow it, they'll follow their interest rate on their mortgage or an interest rate on savings and checking and that sort of thing to the extent that they're able to get anything on savings or checking.

But you know going back in time what was the

problem that policy policymakers were attempting to solve in creating the Federal Reserve?

It's an interesting question because in the crisis, in the most recent financial crisis, a lot of people

...