At this event, Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX) will discuss new legislation aimed at increasing the accountability of the Federal Reserve while strengthening its independence from political pressure.

Longstanding policies that were intended to promote confidence in the independence of regulatory decision-making have now been wiped away by the Dodd-Frank act, which has in effect placed all the financial regulators under the direction of the Treasury secretary.

For decades, investors have spent countless hours speculating about the Federal Reserve's agenda on interest rates. Market watchers study every adjective in often-cryptic Fed statements for clues about the outlook for monetary policy.

Chairman Bernanke can be faulted for not anticipating the severity of the global financial crisis, however he deserves some credit for helping stabilize the financial sector at a time of unprecedented instability.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would be wise to learn from the Titanic and slow his second experiment with quantitative easing, the expansion of the central bank’s balance sheet known as QE2.

The reality of Ben Bernanke's press conference did not live up to the hype. The discussion was dry and undramatic and could only have been torpor-inducing to anyone outside the economics profession. In the pursuit of a notion of openness, the Fed will have lost its mystique.

As fiscal stimulus packages unwind, fiscal drag may rise in the United States to a level equivalent to about 1.5 percentage points of GDP early in 2012.

Vincent Reinhart testifies on monetary policy and the price of oil.