User:Nick Gardner /Sandbox
The contribution of monetary policy
There is some evidence of a connection between the subprime crisis and the Federal Reserve System's conduct of monetary policy. Since the 1980s, the Bank's monetary policy had successfully stabilised the American economy - and its housing market - by the application of the Taylor rule under which changes to the bank's discount rate had been related to the spare capacity in the economy. During the period from 2003 to 2006, however, the discount rate was held well below the level suggested by that rule. The author of the rule, Professor John Taylor of Stanford University, has given an account of the consequences of that departure [2]. He argues that those low interest rates helped to foster the extraordinary surge which occurred in the demand for housing, and that the eventual fall in housing prices would have been less steep, and the following crisis less severe, had the Taylor rule been followed.
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