Ben S Bernanke: Money, gold and the Great Depression (Central Bank Articles and Speeches)

I am pleased to be able to present the H. Parker Willis Lecture in Economic Policy here at Washington and Lee University. As you may know, Willis was an important figure in the early history of my current employer, the Federal Reserve System. While he was a professor at Washington and Lee, Willis advised Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, one of the key legislators involved in the founding of the Federal Reserve. Willis also served on the National Monetary Commission, which recommended the creation of the Federal Reserve, and he went on to become the research director at the Federal Reserve from 1918 to 1922. At the Federal Reserve, Willis pushed for the development of new and better economic statistics, facing the resistance of those who took the view that too many facts only confuse the issue. Willis was also the first editor of the Federal Reserve Bulletin, the official publication of the Fed, which in Willis's time as well as today provides a wealth of economic statistics. As an illustration of the intellectual atmosphere in Washington at the time he served, Willis reported that when the first copy of the Bulletin was presented to the Secretary of the Treasury, the esteemed Secretary replied, “This Government ain't going into the newspaper business.”