The Fed is comprised of 7 board members determining their actions into the economy. While the FED does NOT control the economy, it does influence and affects the emotion of the financial markets. To learn more how the FED is not in control of the financial markets (but does inject emotional influence, click here.
But it is an entity, it does have about 9 trillion dollar in assets. And what the FED tries to do is to remove the variations in the market, 'stabilizing' all assets in one direction, up. Doing this will have the long term affect of making the financial markets more fragile. By having 9T in assets is is now a liability of the US Government, in addition to government debt. This is how we have arrived at today.
The problem with the FED is it introduces human emotion into human financial system that thrives best with an open market. The open market gives the feedback to companies by investment attractiveness, causing investors to buy or sell based on clear, open, evaluation of their financial health. The open flow of objective information is essential to help analysts and investors 'judge' a company. Since 2008, we have abolished mark to market asset valuation, removing visibility into the health of the banking system. The Fed continues to force interest rates to a place they 'feel' is the right level. They will not, and cannot allow the market to determine the rate, due to their emotional pressure they must act. Since Allen Greenspan this has been the FED has taken. Decades of intervention has brought us to today, a fragile ecosystem.
Below is a you tuber summary of Nassim Taleb book "AntiFragile". If you rather listen to the author summary, a great one is here:
