An Insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America

Brilliant! She deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom for caring enough to explain this corrupt entity to the average person, and the trajectory we're on. I'm going to try and protect myself and my family! Thank you Danielle!

An insider's perspective of the Federal reserve bank! No punches pulled, yet an apparently honest look at how average Americans have been sold a bill of goods having their futures stripped away by poor monetary policy.

Enlightening book about the inside workings of the Federal Reserve. Academics can be so far removed from the real world. Don't rely on these people. Knowledge is power for the individual, "Average Joe."

Really good audiobook! Very enlightening as to the inner workings of how fiscal policy and various monetary decisions are made. Great way to tell an insiders view as if we were having drinks together.

American households have been and continue to be fleeced by the Fed, in cahoots with Wall Street and Congress. Low interest rates and lax banking oversight are costing most Americans dearly while enriching the politically connected. "Fed Up" lays it all out in plain English from an insider's perspective. Thank you Danielle for exposing the political, self-interests at play in the Federal Reserve System.

When a Fed insider, somebody with nine years of service at the permanently dissenting Dallas Fed, decides to blow the whistle on the most contentious (and perhaps even the most independent) branch of government, you drop what you’re doing and you read what they have to say.

I was dying to hear Danielle DiMartino Booth’s inside view on how an organization like the Fed balances its often opposing roles of monitoring the economy versus cheerleading, the inside view of how the sundry presidents coordinate with each other, the inside view on what the staff is told to research and how the results of the research are released, the inside view on how the Fed is adjusting its famous (and famously inadequate) models to the changing environment around it, the inside view on the unofficial role the value of the dollar plays in the calculation of interest rate policy (the dollar is allegedly the business of the Treasury, but how can it only be that?), the inside view of what responsibility the Fed has to other nations that effectively peg their currency to the dollar, the inside view on how the Fed calculates the pros and cons of zero interest rates for savers versus businesses, the inside view on the discussion that is surely taking place regarding whether it is the level of QE purchases or the pace of new purchases that influences the economy more (Bernanke is on record saying it’s the level, but that’s just his view), the inside view of how it will be best to go about unwinding QE, the inside view of the debate that must be raging on when and how this process ought to start, the inside view on the true level of labor slack, the insider view on labor hysteresis (a Yellen special), the inside view on what the wealth effects of low rates are, who they accrete to and how they trickle down.

Away from the technical, I was also hoping that the book might probe the more political / more philosophical issues: Why did the Fed shift from the “taking away the punchbowl” mode to “money for nothing” mode at the historical juncture when it did? Greenspan was a man of his time, surely, not a shaper of opinion. When did the Fed become an underwriter of prosperity rather than a guarantor of the system’s integrity? Is the above ever discussed in the inner sanctum?

Well, I’ve finished the book and I’m none the wiser about any of the above.

This account alternates between telling the personal story of the author’s career at the Fed, providing an actually rather decent narrative of how the crisis of 2006-2009 unfolded (which would be fine if this was not the tenth such book I’ve bought), complaining that Goldman Sachs has infiltrated the Fed like it’s done all other important parts of government (watch out: the Germans have invaded Poland, I’m told) and moaning about the insularity of the Fed’s staff, all of whom hold a PhD in Economics from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale or Chicago (memo to the author: their problem with you is that 1. for all your three degrees, you are uneducated and for example think Pandora came out of the box, as you say on page 40 / economically uneducated and think the delays to the official data come from seasonalisation, which is instant, not that you don’t have a PhD and 2. Unlike your boss Fisher, geeks often do not realize that the uneducated can have valid views).

Away from the author’s, at times interesting and touching, personal story, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING here that you could not have found in the newspaper, I’m afraid. Except perhaps for stuff that I could not possibly care about. Dunno, for example Dallas represents the 11th district and San Francisco the 12th. Or where the checks get processed, where the bullion is kept and where the cash is kept. I’ve already forgotten, because I could not care less, but that stuff actually can be found in the book. Along with the fact that the Fed did not see the crisis coming. Duh.

If you were abducted by aliens in 2006 and they just released you and for some reason you want to find out about the financial crisis of 2006 – 2009 this book is as good a book as any other book out there and probably better in some respects, because the author has some great credibility in the “I told you so” department: she did see the crisis coming and she wrote about it, first in the press and then in her internal reports in the Fed. Buy it, read it and you’ll have a decent idea about how it went.

But it truly does not contain a single original finding.

In the absence of original thoughts, the book would still be worth buying if the author had listed all her gripes with the Fed clearly in one place. A well-drafted chapter on all the failings of the Fed, written by somebody with the authority that can only come from having been on the inside, would have been dynamite. You won’t find one here, I’m afraid. The sundry issues the author has with the Fed are diffused through the story and only ever summarized (kind of) in the… introduction.

In short, this book does not build an argument. It’s a long moan, with some history thrown in.

I pretty much agree the author’s views on most of the issues, so I find that to be a total shame.

Danielle's book sort of made me angry. Everything I believed about the Fed and the mind stink that permeates their outdated theories, is true. Danielle is the ultimate insider who stood outside enough to see the truth. I'm thankful she was bold enough, insightful enough, skilled enough to take on this mission of exposing how the Fed operates. Now, I'm not saying the Fed is subversive. It's not the Illuminati. It's a codgy collective of intellectuals who exist behind tall gates of denial; they cannot understand what Main Street America has gone through during the financial crisis and what Americans are going through today which is indeed, a financial repression. Danielle has a storytelling aspect to her which allows you to connect how Fed actions directly affect everyday lives. She has a gift for writing. You will not be able to put this one down. It'll also tick you off a bit. Like it did me. If you are a student of or passionate about monetary policy, economics and still working through effects of the Great Recession in your household, you will take her words to heart. I hope she never stops writing. I hope she remains on task. Telling the story, keeping us grounded and taking the Fed to task. Honorable work.

I am very impressed with the book. Someone who saw/experienced from the inside what many of us felt, feared, but had no way to confirm our thoughts about how the "shadow banking" and other areas of our government handled and dealt with this almost disaster time.

Excellent if troubling read and the paucity of understanding coming from a mountain of knowledge. Reminds me of the old "definition" of an expert being someone who know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing!

Excellent read on history leading into housing/financial crisis and events during this crisis. Written in everyday English that all can understand. Should be taught in schools as an example why real life economics (market reactions, people reactions, etc.) should be included in the models used by the FED as well as our political hero's. Who knows maybe these groups would respect the hard earned monies we send to them and correct the waste and corruption. Thank you for your service with Richard Fisher and his team and for writing this book.
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A very rare honest reflection on The Federal Reserve Bank which scared the wits out of me. Seems like someone, somehow thought it would be a great idea to give The Fed the license to carry out an academic economic thought experiment in real time using trillions of $ with zero external control and no off switch and clearly zero positive results. My hope is that one day the very people who consider themselves so much smarter then the rest of the world responsible for QE, ZIRP, etc. will be held to account.