Federal Reserve Policies 2000-

The first decade of the 21st century saw the U.S. economy on a peripatetic through tumultuous events, euphoric highs, and abysmal lows. The ten-year window highlighted three periods: 2000-2004, 2004-2007, and 2007-2010 in which the Federal Reserve actively utilized their policy levers to achieve their dual policy mandate of full employment and low inflation. The Fed's policy bag includes: the Fed funds rate, open market operations, discount rate, reserve requirements, and margin rates all of which were utilized during these three periods to achieve the ostensible goals of Fed policy. It is worth noting that in each of the three periods the Fed responded to economic conditions which they perceived to be harbingers of either inflationary pressures or anemic GDP and employment growth.

2000-2004

On March 10, 2000 the NASDAQ composite, a stock index representative of high flying dot-com companies, peaked at 5048 (Zarroli, J. March...
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