Organizations
How companies, institutions, and movements embody the sixteen values.
Federal Reserve
Stability as the mandate
The Federal Reserve was created after the Panic of 1907 demonstrated that the United States economy needed an institutional lender of last resort to prevent bank runs from cascading into economic collapse. The dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment is a security-orientation written into law: the institution exists to prevent the economic instability that destroys the material security of ordinary people. Every interest rate decision, every open market operation, and every emergency credit facility deployed in a crisis is an attempt to maintain the stable conditions in which economic life can be conducted.
Federal Reserve
Stability as the mandate
The Federal Reserve was created after the Panic of 1907 demonstrated that the United States economy needed an institutional lender of last resort to prevent bank runs from cascading into economic collapse. The dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment is a security-orientation written into law: the institution exists to prevent the economic instability that destroys the material security of ordinary people. Every interest rate decision, every open market operation, and every emergency credit facility deployed in a crisis is an attempt to maintain the stable conditions in which economic life can be conducted.
The 2008 financial crisis response, in which unprecedented Federal Reserve intervention prevented the collapse of the payment system and the savings of millions of ordinary people. Decades of inflation management keeping the value of wages and savings stable enough for long-term planning. A lender-of-last-resort function preventing bank runs from becoming depressions in multiple instances.
Monetary policy conducted by an unelected institution operating behind procedural opacity that makes democratic accountability for its decisions structurally difficult. The post-2008 quantitative easing program, which stabilized the financial system by inflating asset prices in ways that primarily benefited the already-wealthy. The 2021 assessment of inflation as transitory, which delayed policy response and contributed to the sharpest rate increase cycle in 40 years.
Ben Bernanke's declaration in 2008 that the Fed would do whatever it takes - an institutional commitment to security so unconditional that it created lasting questions about the moral hazard boundaries of the security guarantee.