When things appear to be working well, there’s a natural reluctance to tinker. For several years now, the policymaking arm of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), has conducted monetary policy in a framework in which money growth plays no formal operational role. Since the summer of 1993, when Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reported that M2 had been de-emphasized, economic outcomes have been quite favorable. Output growth has accelerated to an average rate of about 3 percent over the period, and inflation has fallen to nearly 2 percent thus far in 1997. Moreover, the “core” rate of inflation—the Consumer Price Index (CPI) less food and energy— rose 2.2 percent over the 12-month period ending last September, the smallest annual increase since 1966. Such results do not inspire a significant change in the way policy is implemented.

When government fails, whom do citizens blame? The purpose of this study is to explore citizen attitudes regarding blame of intelligence officials for making America vulnerable to the attacks on 9/11. The study used a short Internet-based survey experiment to test whether party cues affect people’s attitudes about the responsibility of three government officials in making America vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks: CIA Director George Tenet, FBI Director Louis Freeh, and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks (KN) over the Internet in February 2007, using a nationally representative sample of 1015 American adults. KN recruits panel members over the telephone via random digit dialing (RDD) and provides them with WebTV equipment in exchange for their participation in weekly surveys, which they complete online. All Americans were sampled from the KN panel. Variables for this study can be divided into two general categories: demographic and feelings over 9/11. The feelings variables question the respondent about personal emotion connected to 9/11 and how much blame the respondent places on George Tenet, Louis Freeh, and Alan Greenspan. Finally, respondents were asked about the blame to place on additional federal, state, and local authorities.

This survey focuses on senior executives' opinion about the economy. Issues addressed include the U.S. economy, inflation, the 30 year treasury rate, unemployment rate, expectations for respondent's company, approval ratings of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve, President Clinton's handling of the economy, the budget negotiations, and capital gains tax.

This poll, conducted May 19-21, 1998, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked for their opinions of President Bill Clinton and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy, as well as their views on the United States Congress, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Vice President Al Gore, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, former President George Bush, former First Lady Barbara Bush, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and 1996 Florida gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush. Those queried were asked a series of questions relating to the stock market and the Asian financial crisis, such as their impact on the respondent and on the United States economy. Related topics concerned respondents' investment management and sources of information on investments, including the Internet, and the respondents' opinions on the future of technology and automobile stocks. Respondents were also asked about their feelings toward different countries, especially India and Pakistan. A series of questions addressed the recent testing of nuclear bombs by India, including the importance of India's actions to the interests of the United States, possible United States responses, the possibility of Pakistan's conducting similar tests, and the likelihood of nuclear war in the next 15 years. Additional topics covered the November 1998 congressional elections, the anti-trust case brought by the United States government and 20 states against Microsoft, the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations involving President Clinton, computer access, electronic mail, and on-line polling. Background information on respondents includes age, race, ethnicity, sex, education, religion, family income, political party, political orientation, voter registration and participation history, age of children in household, stock market investments, and retirement savings plans.

During the period beginning roughly in the mid-1980s until the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008), the U.S. economy experienced a time of relative economic calm, with low inflation and consistent GDP growth. Compared with the turbulent economic era which had preceded it in the 1970s and the early 1980s, the lack of extreme fluctuations in the business cycle led some commentators to suggest that macroeconomic issues such as high inflation, long-term unemployment and financial crises were a thing of the past. Indeed, the President of the American Economic Association, Professor Robert Lucas, famously proclaimed in 2003 that "central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes". Ben Bernanke, the future chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient, coined the term 'the Great Moderation' to describe this era of newfound economic confidence. The era came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the GFC in the Summer of 2007, as the U.S. financial system began to crash due to a downturn in the real estate market.

Causes of the Great Moderation, and its downfall

A number of factors have been cited as contributing to the Great Moderation including central bank monetary policies, the shift from manufacturing to services in the economy, improvements in information technology and management practices, as well as reduced energy prices. The period coincided with the term of Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (1987-2006), famous for the 'Greenspan put', a policy which meant that the Fed would proactively address downturns in the stock market using its monetary policy tools. These economic factors came to prominence at the same time as the end of the Cold War (1947-1991), with the U.S. attaining a new level of hegemony in global politics, as its main geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union, no longer existed. During the Great Moderation, the U.S. experienced a recession twice, between July 1990 and March 1991, and again from March 2001 tom November 2001, however, these relatively short recessions did not knock the U.S. off its growth path. The build up of household and corporate debt over the early 2000s eventually led to the Global Financial Crisis, as the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2007 reverberated across the financial system, with a subsequent credit freeze and mass defaults.