New Economics Findings from Dartmouth College Described (Central Bank Undersight: Assessing the Fed’s Accountability To Congress): Economics

2025 FEB 07 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Economics Daily Report -- Researchers detail new data in Economics. According to news reporting from Hanover, New Hampshire, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “As America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve (‘Fed’) is unique among independent agencies in exercising powers that the U.S. Constitution granted to the legislative branch-namely, regulating the value of money and borrowing funds directly from the public.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Dartmouth College, “In delegating these powers, Congress designed the Fed to ensure that its monetary policy decisions would be insulated from political interference. Furthermore, Congress has a constitutional obligation to maintain effective oversight of the Fed’s exercise of these duties. Over the past fifteen years, however, the scope and complexity of monetary policy has outpaced Congress’s ability to monitor these policies through existing mechanisms of oversight. For example, internal shifts in the Fed’s governance and power dynamics have led to the disappearance of dissents on monetary policy decisions, thereby hampering legislators’ abilities to discern the range of views that have informed those decisions. Moreover, in conducting its latest round of securities purchases (‘QE4’) during 2020-22, the Fed did not provide legislators with cost-benefit analyses or risk assessments at any stage of the program. Indeed, QE4 is now likely to cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion, but its efficacy has still not been scrutinized by any external reviews. Over coming years, persistent congressional ‘undersight’ could threaten the delicate balance between the Fed’s independence and its public accountability.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Potential approaches to restoring that balance could include strengthened reporting requirements, secured access to sensitive information, and external reviews by congressional watchdogs.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Central Bank Undersight: Assessing the Fed’s Accountability To Congress. Vanderbilt Law Review, 2024;77(6). Vanderbilt Law Review can be contacted at: Vanderbilt Law Review, Vanderbilt Univ School Of Law, Nashville, TN 37240, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Andrew T. Levin, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, United States.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)