What the Federal Reserve Has (Has Not) Done

This news article was published in Savannah Morning News.

The Federal Reserve Bank acts, in essence, as the bank for all commercial banks in the U.S. Under the Fed's dual mandate of price stability and full employment, the bank is charged with numerous duties: Clear all checks, conduct the nation's monetary policy and lend to commercial banks during dire economic and financial times. However, the financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession of the last four years has brought about Fed behavior uncommon in recent decades. The most notable entails unprecedented balance sheet expansions from purchasing billions of dollars of mortgage backed securities and treasuries, thereby injecting tremendous amounts of liquidity, or cash-equivalent, into our banking system...