The Federal Reserve System was built to stop a banking panic. More than a century later, it still wrestles with the same question: how do you move money quickly without moving judgment too fast?
Austan Goolsbee is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, one of the most closely watched voices on U.S. interest rates and inflation. A longtime University of Chicago Booth economist who chaired Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, he is equally known for empirical research on the internet and taxes and for being the rare central banker who once won Washington's funniest celebrity contest.