DALLAS — In the 1920s, in the wee small hours of the mornings, employees at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas sang while they worked. One, Jack Culpepper, went into vaudeville, where he teamed up with a dance partner named Ginger. They married and performed as “Ginger and Pepper.” But show business marriages are perishable, so Ginger Rogers found another dance partner, Fred Astaire.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, who calls the legendary dance team “Fed and Ginger,” defends the Fed as an institution as vigorously as he questions its current policy. He prefers policies more suited to the Fed as it was before it acquired the burden — and temptation — of the dual mandate. Hence his praise for legislation by another Texan, Republican Rep. Kevin Brady.
Before the Fed was created 99 years ago, the U.S. economy was in recession 48 percent of the time; since 1913, it has been in recession only about 20 percent of the time. The Fed has done much good. It cannot, however, do every good thing, although Congress now seems to think it should.
In July, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified to the Senate, where one of Fisher’s Harvard classmates, the ineffable Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., clearly hoping the Fed would give the economy a pre-election boost, exhorted Bernanke: “The Fed is the only game in town.” Good grief.