While there is certainly much any reader could learn from this book, it certainly cannot be claimed to be definitive.
My job requires me to know quite a bit about the Federal Reserve, the details of whose various processes and responsibilities are usually given short shrift in most macroeconomics textbooks. And while it's the easiest thing in the world to find a book which mentions the Fed, usually nothing more than a cursory overview of the institution is given before the discussion moves on to the three tools of monetary policy and their roles in the macroeconomy.
Thus it was I was transported with delight when I was alerted that Alpha Books had come out with this title in 2003 (as of my writing it appears to be out of print). Others might think the title odd or arcane, but for me being conversant with the esoteric workings of the Fed has a direct bearing on my livelihood.
Alas! This book is not so great. I am disappointed to report that it reads like a government brochure, without getting down to the nitty-gritty. Or only brushing the nitty-gritty.
Worse, remember how I said that most economic textbooks focus on the Fed's three main tools of monetary policy and not much else? Well, this book doesn't even do that, dealing only glancingly with monetary policy.
From the look of it, you might think you're getting a much deeper, much more detailed explanation of how monetary policy works, but you'd be wrong. That's not the kind of book it is. It's almost a coffee table book, without color plates. There are no graphs and charts, and most of the text employs a "Who woulda thought!"-type approach. It seems to be written for people who already understand the subject--pace the title.
In particular, what I was looking for were extended discussions of the three tools of monetary policy, and a sickening amount of detail as to how they're carried out, their ins and outs, their effects, etc. I found nothing of the kind.
For example, in something I was reading the other day, I came across a statement to the effect that to increase the money supply, the Fed buys bonds "from the government." It's this last part that puzzled me. I thought the Fed was buying back bonds in the hands of private citizens.
So I sought out the explanation in this book. Surely there, the nuts and bolts of how Fed bond-buying goes down would be spelled out in nauseating detail.
No such luck. (Although the book does inform you that the Fed occasionally buys and sells bonds.) And ditto for similar technical questions.
Not that the book is a complete waste of time. There's a lot here I didn't know about the Fed, but most of what I learned was simply not vital, functional knowledge about the nuts and bolts of how the system operates. The book celebrates definitions; deeper explanations are few and far between.
In sum, I would characterize "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Federal Reserve" as a mere appreciation of the Fed, filled with trivia, addresses, definitions, and a raft of interesting facts, but designed either for one whose interest is merely casual, or who already knows so much about the workings of our central bank that they're dying for a round of trivial pursuit.
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