The Federal Reserve is one of the most disliked entities in the United States at present, right alongside the IRS. Americans despise the Fed, but they’re also generally a bit confused as to why they distrust our central bank.
Their animus is reasonable, though, because the Fed’s most famous function—targeting the Fed funds rate—is totally backwards. John Tamny explains this backwardness in terms of a Taylor Swift concert followed by a ride home with Uber.
In modern times, he points out, the notion of credit has been perverted, so that most people believe it’s money and that the supply of it can therefore be increased. This false notion has aggrandized the Fed with power that it can’t possibly use wisely. The contrast between the grinding poverty of Baltimore and the abundance of Silicon Valley helps illustrate the problem, along with stories about Donald Trump, Robert Downey Jr., Jim Harbaugh (the Michigan football coach), and robots.
Who Needs the Fed? makes a sober case against the Federal Reserve by explaining what credit really is, and why the Fed’s existence is inimical to its creation. Readers will come away entertained, much more knowledgeable, and prepared to argue that the Fed is merely superfluous on its best days but perilous on its worst.
"It's not far into John Tamny's Who Needs the Fed? that you realize all of your preconceived notions about the Federal Reserve need to be tossed out the window and forgotten. Instead, markets rule over opaque Fed pronouncements and analysis of the scribblings in monthly Fed Minutes. All investors should read this book."
—Andy Kessler, author of Wall Street Meat and Eat People
"Like a blazing sun melting away a dangerously thick fog, this delightfully written, well-argued, and insightful book clears away disastrous misconceptions about money, credit, and the operations of the Federal Reserve. It will become one of the most enormously—and positively—influential treatises of our time."
—Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media
"In the best tradition of Henry Hazlitt and Robert Bartley, Tamny’s book offers a provocative yet principled new look at the role of credit in today’s economy. Properly equating “credit” with an economy’s resources, Tamny systematically debunks the case for government or central bank efforts to increase credit."
—David Resler, former chief economist, Nomura Securities
"Tamny is a brilliant and insightful writer whose provocative style will stretch your intellectual bandwidth and force you to see the world in a new way."
—Anthony Scaramucci, host of “Wall Street Week”
"John Tamny makes a strong case that the Fed never had as much influence as either its supporters hoped or its critics feared—and that what power it had in the past is today fast diminishing. In the process, he offers iconoclastic dismissals of popular macroeconomic constructs including money supply, the multiplier, the Phillips curve, the Laffer curve, banks, stimulus, and quantitative easing."
—Cliff Asness, founding principal, AQR Capital Management
"John Tamny has written an easy-to-read and crucial-to-know overview of the Federal Reserve today, showing how the well-intentioned actions of central bankers in fact hurt our long-term economic potential. Who Needs the Fed? is an outstanding work of contrarian common sense—a must read."
—Tom Adams, former CEO of Rosetta Stone, CEO, Workaround LLC
