Institutions like the Oxford Union were established “as a forum for discussion and debate at a time when the free exchange of ideas was a notion foreign to the restrictive university authorities.” Arguably we need such institutions in all parts of society more than ever where thesis can meet its antithesis and hopefully create a new synthesis. All of us as individuals have a responsibility to be more open and to engage respectfully with different views if we are to have a constructive political debate about the issues that matter to all of us. 5. Manage the boundary between Technocracy and Democracy carefully  How can we get the balance right between that which needs to be decided by experts versus politicians? Not surprisingly, the growth in the space occupied by experts, in part because many decisions are increasingly technical, can foster resentment of unelected individuals making decisions that have huge social consequences. Problems often arise when experts try to be politicians or when politicians try to be experts. Clarity about these roles and accountability to reinforce that clarity are essential. I have spent much of my career managing that boundary.
The first objective is to obtain the securities at competitive and appropriate prices for the Federal Reserve, as doing so will ultimately benefit the U.S. taxpayer. The second objective is to minimize any negative effects that the purchases might have on the functioning of financial markets. As I noted in a speech in October 2010, the liquidity and efficiency of the Treasury market provide tremendous benefits to our economy, and the Desk was intent on designing a purchase program that would not diminish those benefits in any meaningful way. 3 To achieve these objectives, the Desk relies on a system in which it purchases securities through reverse auctions with a set of established counterparties called the primary dealers. 4 The securities that are eligible for each operation and an indication of the total size of the operation are announced in advance. 5 Dealers then submit offers to sell those securities, either for their own accounts or on behalf of their customers, over a 45-minute period on the morning of the operation. Those offers are assessed by the Desk based on two criteria: their proximity to market prices at that time, and an internal methodology for comparing the relative value of the securities at the offered prices. 6 This process occurs over a proprietary trading system called Fedtrade under the oversight of Desk staff, and the results are typically finalized and published within a few minutes of the close of the operation.