Austan Goolsbee

And that was the thing that the first and second national banks of the United States kind of foundered on way back in the early days of the country.

They don't want a central bank that was controlled by the federal government.

They thought it gives too much power to the central government.

It could be turned to corruption, etc.

So there was a stroke of genius in 1913, which set up a little bit of tension, but kind of a new governance model that said, let's have a regional component automatically in there.

Yeah, look, it's a little goofy.

It was laid out circa the economy in 1913.

I think they needed the—Champ Clark was the Speaker of the House, and whoever's the head of the banking committee, they were both from Missouri.

So the two of the banks are in Missouri.

Really strange Missouri got two Fed banks.

St.

Louis and Kansas City say, no, no, that's totally bogus.

We were critical.

But the idea that there would be these regional representations, and like the Chicago Fed is 90% of the population of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

So it's kind of the heart of the Midwest, we're by far the most manufacturing intensive of all the districts, way, way by far the most auto production.

That gives us a regional character that is a form of monetary independence that's critically important for the central bank to have when you're setting interest rates.

That having these different perspectives automatically on there is really quite important.

And the second thing, what do we do all day?

Just remember, the most prominent part of the jobs of the feds is voting on monetary policy.

We go every six weeks, and it's really cool.