I have mentioned some of the things the Fed does to help communities, but the most important thing we do is to use monetary policy to promote a stronger economy. The Federal Reserve has taken extraordinary steps since the onset of the financial crisis to spur economic activity and create jobs, and I will explain why I believe those efforts are still needed.
It could be that the effort to sharpen accountability through a very tight mandate was viewed as most important immediately after the granting of instrument independence. Such tight mandates might also have been especially important at this juncture, which typically followed a period of poor inflation performance and, hence, diminished credibility with respect to price stability.