Ep 354 - The Fed As a Weapon of Class Power with L. Randall Wray

Randy: “We’re supposed to believe the central bank manages inflation by using interest rates?"

Steve: “It’s ridiculous.”

L. Randall Wray, one of the original MMT economists, recently wrote a paper with Yeva Nersisyan entitled, No, the Fed is NOT Independent – It is a Creature of Congress. Steve invited Randy for a conversation about how the Federal Reserve is, and always has been, a "creature of Congress," and its supposed independence is a smokescreen that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

The Fed has a dual mandate of full employment and price stability, yet it consistently prioritizes the stability of Wall Street over the well-being of Main Street, bailing out banks while leaving workers to face the fallout of manufactured recessions.

Randy describes how raising interest rates – the Fed’s so-called tool – works to suppress wages by slowing the economy and killing job growth. Federal Reserve transcripts explicitly state that they fear “wage inflation” but see “profit inflation” as desirable.

Randy wants Congress to take control of the central bank. (Some of us don’t see Congress as independent either.) But whatever our belief in the role of the state and who it serves, the episode contains valuable information on central bank operations, how interest rate hikes discipline labor, the truth about “fighting” inflation, and the difference between monetary and fiscal policy. We need to understand the mechanics of power if we’re going to build the future we deserve.

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Emeritus Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his newest book on the topic is Understanding Modern Money Theory: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Elgar, 2025).