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date: 17 February 2020

Abstract and Keywords

This article explores the application of technical rationality to the control of the money supply. It argues, on the one hand, that developed economies, like the United States, have moved inexorably toward greater control of the money supply by technocrats. On the other hand, we are struck by the dangers of that technocratic control. A technical elite, with significant autonomy from oversight, has interpretive techniques of considerable power. In the end, the Fed's performance in October 1979 can be seen as a brilliant piece of political theatre. But, as in the recent financial crisis, the performance is not always going to be reviewed so admiringly.

Keywords: central banking, technical rationality, money supply, monetary policy, technocrats, Federal Reserve

Mitchel Y. Abolafia

Mitchel Y. Abolafia is Professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany/State University of New York. He has also taught at Sloan School of Management at MIT, Johnson School of Management at Cornell, and the School of Management, University of California at Davis. He is the author of Making Markets: Opportunism and Restraint on Wall Street (1997). He holds a BA in Sociology from Tufts University, and a PhD in Sociology from Stony Brook University.

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