Central Banking 101
Central banking is magic. With a few words, the Fed can lift the stock market out of desperation and catapult it towards euphoric highs. With a few keystrokes, the Fed can conjure up trillions of dollars and fund virtually unlimited Federal spending. And with a few poor decisions, the Fed can plunge the entire world into a recession. The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and also one of the most difficult to understand. The Fed acts through its Open Markets Desk, which sits at the heart of the global financial system as the world's ultimate and limitless provider of dollars. On behalf of policy makers, the Desk gathers market intelligence from all the major market participants, sifts through reams of internal data, and works behind the scenes keep the financial system intact. It is responsible for all of the Fed's market operations, from trillions in quantitative easing to hundreds of billions in repo and FX-swap loans. The financial crises of 2008 and 2020 abated only through the emergency interventions of the Desk. Joseph Wang spent five years studying the monetary system as a trader on the Desk. From that vantage point, Joseph saw firsthand how the Fed operates and how the financial system really works. This book is a distillation of his experience that aims to educate and demystify.
Stats for nerds
13recommend
18mentions
14people
2022–2023years
94% recommend6% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Slightly off-topic question: which information sources do you recommend for someone who wants to have a good conceptual understanding of economics, finance and investing? Here's what I liked so far:
People (their blogs or Twitter): Paul Krugman, Cullen Roche, Lyn Alden, Joseph Wang, Aswath Damodaran, Matthew C. Klein.
Books: Macroeconomics by Mankiw, Pragmatic Capitalism, Central Banking 101.
Podcast, news websites: I don't follow any.
- If you've read BoE paper then I guess you are already at the 90th percentile.
Here are some interesting rabbit holes I've found to be useful.
1. Central Banking 101 [1]. A terrific no non-sense book. The author is an ex-central banker.
2. Same author's blog[2] and twitter[3] handle is full of good insights and details.
3. Lyn Alden[4] writes well but know that she is biased towards Bitcoin which sort of clouds her writings once in a while.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56863052-central-banking...
- Central Banking 101 by Joseph Wang does a great of explaining the repo and reverse repo markets.
- Recommend picking up a copy of Central Banking 101[1] for a gentle introduction; the basic mechanics of fractional reserve banking are explained in Chapter 2.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Central-Banking-101-Joseph-Wang/dp/09...
- If you find this article and comments thought provoking I recommend you read Central Banking 101 by Joseph Wang.
- Central Banking 101 by Joseph J Wang is decent.
Related
Macroeconomics
10 recommend · 17
Basic economics
88 recommend · 156
The Bitcoin Standard
33 recommend · 64
Modern Macroeconomics
2 recommend · 2
Easy Money
2 recommend · 2
The Simple Path to Wealth
30 recommend · 50
Principles of Macroeconomics
3 recommend · 4
