A Fed Spirit

Have you wondered who is "the Fed" that hikes and drops interest rates?

Lucy hopes you do. After haunting them for over one hundred years, she thinks introducing them to you will give purpose to her extended existence.

Lucy intertwines moments of her own life in the early twentieth century, when the Fed was new, with a story of the work lives of a few staff in one of the Federal Reserve Banks' Research Departments in 2018 and 2019.

Stella, a longtime successful executive committed to public service, is one of these staff members. Another is Wendell, Stella's new boss and the head of the Research Department. A PhD, he is suspicious of his department's powerful non-PhDs, including Stella.

While the two clash over both common and uniquely-Fed workplace issues, Stella doesn't realize the threat to her employment. When it takes shape and coincides with personal tragedy, she questions the worth of her lifetime commitment to the Fed's mission.

​​​​​​​After leaving behind the fictional story, readers of A Fed Spirit will be haunted by the gap between how little some of us know about the Fed and how much we ought know to improve our own finances and hold our elected officials accountable.