How Can Federal Reserve Banks Affect Change In The Overall Monetary Policy

343 Words2 Pages
To affect change in the overall monetary policy, Federal Reserve banks have multiple tools available to them, which include: open market operations, discount lending, and reserve requirements (Mishkin & Eakins, 2012). Out of those three tools, open market operations are described to be the most important of tools available due to their leading role in determining interest rates and changes in the reserves. The objective of using the open market operations is to keep interest rates at a target level through the sales and purchases of securities (Open Market Operations, 2013). Another way of explaining this concept would be that the Fed purchases securities to increase the reserves and monetary base. Alternately, the reserves and monetary base