Week 5 Written Assignment Federal Reserve 1 Federal Reserve Tools Name Withheld University of the People BUS 2203 Instructor Joel Almanzar Week 5 Written Assignment Federal Reserve 2 In my essay this week we will explore the Federal Reserve. What monetary tool that is available to Federal Reserve is used most often, and why is it used? I will describe how expansionary activities by the FED impacts credit availability, money supply, interest rates, and security prices. Lastly, suppose the Federal Reserve purchases $10 billion worth of foreign currency in exchange for deposit accounts at the federal reserve. I will show the changes that result from this transaction on the FED’s balance sheet. The tool used most often by the FED is the open markets operations …show more content…
To increase reserves the FED buys securities and pays for them by making a deposit to the account maintained by the FED. The FED lower reserves by selling securities and collects from those accounts. These sales and purchases of securities are done under the supervision of the Federal Open Market Committee. The FOMC uses this tool to control the interest rates and money supply in the US economy( www.federalreserveeducation.or g, n.d.). The simplest answer as to why the FOMC tinkers with the sales and purchase are the goal of maintaining a balance or equilibrium in the economy in the US. I will describe how expansionary activities by the FED impacts credit availability, money supply, interest rates, and security prices. The FED uses expansionary activities to control credit availability to banks either up or down depending on what it sees as needed. This is done through the ratio rate. The lower the rate the more money a bank has to loan. The lower the rate the less money the bank has to keep on hand which means the bank has more money to loan(Tarver, E.,2015, May 28). This increases the money supply, the rate of inflation and economic