The current "dual" between the two mandates is to reduce price inflation by increasing interest rates to increase unemployment and kill businesses to choke off aggregate demand. This has been the most important economic and investment issue this year and this dual minimization procedure has dominated Fed policy for at least three-quarters of a century.

This is odd given that the Fed is in the business of creating money, the cause of price inflation, and it is responsible for all the largest surges in unemployment since its founding in 1913. Employing an army of monetary economists, macro theorists, and statisticians, the Fed appears to be pursuing its quixotic quest of the Phillips curve sweet spot of minimizing inflation and unemployment.

The real mandate of the Fed is serving its masters, the political elites, by financing government spending and debt, bailing out cronies, and supporting the political process, including the Fed's own interests. Everything else, including the inflation and unemployment rates are derivative of the primary mandate. The so-called dual mandate is just subterfuge to protect the Fed's "confidence game."

The Quest of the False Mandate

In The Fed Explained: What the Central Bank Does, we learn how control of the Fed is "decentralized." This might sound good to some supporters of the free market. However, any hint of decentralization, such as the importance of District Banks, is long gone and the remnant is merely a diversion or historical curiosity. Of the twelve votes on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) there are only four of twelve rotating District Bank presidents voting, plus the President of the New York Fed. The central Board of Governors in Washington DC has seven voting members who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and has nearly twice the voting power over interest rate decisions. Plus, the Chairman (Powell) has the power of the bully pulpit and is the consensus builder on the FOMC.