Introduction: The once and future distributed fed.- Part I. Loving and hating on collective political agency: Three productive-republican monetary histories.- Chapter 1. Three ages and stages of American money.- Chapter 2. Central banking with ‘federalist’ characteristics: The long overdue coming of the fed.- Chapter 3. Central banking with centralization: The breakdown of the 1913 compromise and the republican fed.- Part II. Central banking’s early ‘operating system’: The real bills doctrine.- Chapter 4. Theoretical preliminaries: Scissors require two blades : Endogenous money, its modulation, and its allocation.- Chapter 5. The scissors in retrospect and prospect: Real bills, truths and falsehoods.- Chapter 6. The fed after 1935: Where we are now.- Part III. From national degeneration to regenerative fed decentralization.- Chapter 7. Crises and de- or re-generation.- Chapter 8. Distributing over markets alongside geography: The federal reserve, other reserves, and sipi collaring.- Conclusion: The old made new.

This book provides insight into the history, goals, and potential of the Federal Reserve System (Fed). Synthesizing into a unified vision research and reflections developed over 15 years in the academy and at banking institutions, Robert C. Hockett recovers the sensible founding vision of the early 20th century Fed and updates it to solve the new challenges of the 21st century, especially as America now strives to recover its lost productive preeminence worldwide after decades of "outsourcing" and consequent "deindustrialization." The book presents both the original 1913 Fed and Hockett's modern restored Fed as a unique public/private and federal/local partnership specifically inspired by German industrial development banking and adapted to continent-spanning American conditions. It shows that the original Fed's focus on endogenous money and productive (not speculative) credit allocation was sound and effective as far as it went, while its ignoring exogenous sources of monetary disturbance prevented its properly handling the bubble and bust of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The reaction to that error after the mid-1930s, the book shows, fell into the opposite error, pretending that monetary aggregates could be adequately modulated without being forthrightly allocated in productive rather than speculative directions. A "Goldilocks Fed" must both productively allocate endogenous money and sensibly modulate exogenous money - twin prerequisites to both productive investment and financial stability. Hockett illustrates how the twelve regional Federal Reserve District Banks were founded for just these purposes and can be revitalized to achieve them anew. Robert C. Hockett is Edward Cornell Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy at Cornell University, USA. He is Senior Counsel at Westwood Capital, a socially responsible investment bank, and Visiting Professor of Finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Formerly with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the International Monetary Fund, his teaching, research, and writing interests lie in the fields of organizational, financial, and monetary law and economics in both their positive and normative, as well as their national and transnational, dimensions. His guiding concern in these fields is with the legal and institutional prerequisites to a just, prosperous, and sustainable economic order. He is author of Financing the Green New Deal and The Citizen's Ledger.

“Hockett has for years proven unique in his ability to fuse the legal, economic and financial codes and histories of the world—and particularly of the United States—into a cohesive, rigorously interdisciplinary narrative. His years of studying, and working within, the U.S. Federal Reserve System, have yielded this masterful insight on how the U.S. central banking system slowly abandoned its charge to enable and accelerate the commercial development of all regions of the nation, in favor of the Fed's becoming the steward of global financialization. Hockett's argument—to refocus the Fed on its original productive mission—offers not only improved domestic economic outcomes, but a resulting solution to regional and political divisions that threaten America ... and have now come to destabilize the world.” (Daniel Alpert, Founding & Managing Partner, Westwood Capital LLC and author of “The Age of Oversupply”) “Don’t be fooled by this book’s title.  It is about far more than the US Federal Reserve system (though it is quite good at explaining that).  It is also a brilliant dissection of long-festering flaws in our economic system that elevate speculation over productive investment, fail to stabilize prices and no longer promote a secure middle class.  Best of all, it shows how relatively modest changes in the operation of the Fed could go a long way toward fixing these and other flaws.  Highly recommended for policy-makers in the new Administration and elsewhere.” (Peter Barnes, entrepreneur and author of “With Liberty and Dividends For All”) “Robert Hockett uncovers the politics and policy behind the mysterious institutional design of the Federal Reserve, and shows how concentrated financial power undid the regulated, distributed, balanced growth-and-development model that the Fed was built to foster. With the verve and authority that is his trademark, he calls for renewing that mission—to rebuild, reindustrialize, de-financialize, decentralize, and so to restore dynamism with decency to American life.” (James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government, The University of Texas at Austin) “Hockett’s book is a lucid and engaging tale about the history of the US Federal Reserve and how the institution might be re-imagined to better steer the direction of economic growth, helping to mitigate the biggest crises of our time, from climate change to rising inequality.” (Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in Economics of Innovation and Public Value + Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London and author of “Mission Economy”) “‘Spread the Fed’ is a must-read for policymakers, economists, and anyone interested in the future of central banking. The book contributes significantly to the ongoing debate about the role of central banks in the 21st century. Hockett’s vision of a decentralized, democratized Federal Reserve is not just a theoretical exercise; it offers a pragmatic blueprint focused on ensuring a more equitable and resilient economy.” (Julia M. Puaschunder, Postdoctoral Scientist, Interuniversity Consortium of New York, Columbia University and author of “The Future of Resilient Finance”) “Banking in the US used to be legally required to be small-scale and local in orientation. That in turn assured (a) productive 'patient capital' investment rather than destructively speculative financialization, (b) reasonably even development across all of our nation's many diverse regions, and (c) longterm financial and monetary stability. As Robert Hockett of Cornell University and previously the New York Fed shows, a key part of this better arrangement was what he calls the original Federal Reserve System's 'distributed' structure and associated regional-productivist orientation. By bringing this original system back—by what he calls 'spreading the Fed'—Hockett shows, we can restore sustainably and democratically productive, not speculative, human development back to our nation as well as to the wider world.” (Susan Witt, Cofounder, BerkShares Community Currency and Executive Director, Schumacher Center for a New Economics)

Catalogues regional economic changes over the course of a century in America Proposes a modernized rendition of the old 1913 vintage of the Fed Provides insight into financial institutions, outsourcing, and labor jurisdictions

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