The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States. It has a congressional mandate to promote maximum sustainable employment and price stability. In normal times, the Fed seeks to achieve this mandate by setting the position or "stance" of monetary policy, primarily by managing the level of short-term interest rates.…

Economists use a variety of devices to measure the factors that influence the economy's overall performance. Some of the indicators that economists watch are overall price-level changes, levels of output, and the rate of unemployment, measures that are very often taught as part of the conventional curriculum in high school economics. Such…