The Federal Reserve System: A History of the First 75 Years.

• Author: Hafer, R.W.

Writing a history of the Federal Reserve is a daunting task. Previous attempts generally have explored policies of the Fed for specific periods: policies up to and during the Great Depression, the war years, or the immediate post-war experience. How then can one cover the entire 75 years in a book of only 266

pages? The answer in this case is superficially.

The 169 pages that actually form the body of the text provides a fast ride through 75 tumultuous years of Fed activity. Moore, a retired vice president of the San Antonio branch of the Dallas Fed, gives the reader a staccato glimpse of Fed actions and the atmosphere in which they were made. For example, in the 14 page chapter covering the period 1970-79, 16 different subheadings comprise the discussion. Some of these seem needless discussion of trivial material. For example, one subheading, "More Buildings Needed," covers the fact that the Federal Reserve System's officer count had risen from 558 to 716 during the decade of the seventies and that the...