Christopher J Waller: Update on Federal Reserve Bank operations Speech by Mr Christopher J Waller, Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the Hoover Institution Annual Monetary Policy Conference, Stanford, California, 8 May 2026.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.1 What I want to talk about is central bank independence but applied to Reserve Bank operations
The decentralized and regional design of the Federal Reserve helps reinforce our independence by ensuring that the full range of interests and views are represented in policy discussions, and that is something that should be preserved. But much of the day-to-day operations of the Reserve Banks are not connected to monetary policymaking, and I recently gave a speech at the Brookings Institution where I suggested some improvements to the efficiency of Reserve Bank operations. I believe that these improvements would keep the Fed’s commitment to wisely use public resources in serving the American people and thus help support our independence in conducting monetary policy in the public’s interest.
In that speech I asked two questions: First, what are the functions and activities that are unique to a Reserve Bank District and need to be done by a Reserve Bank in a manner tailored to the local economy and local needs? Second, what functions and activities can be done anywhere, and in fact can be done better and more efficiently if standardized across the entire Federal Reserve System? The first question addresses functions where geography matters.