Chair's Message

Promoting a Healthy Economy and Financial Stability

Kathleen M. Mazzarella is the chairman, president and CEO of Graybar Electric Co. Inc.

The striking image of a soaring eagle in the St. Louis Fed’s logo serves as a bold symbol of the Bank’s mission to promote a healthy economy and financial stability. That word—stability—so appropriately describes the importance of the Federal Reserve over the past decade.

It has been nearly 10 years since the start of the financial crisis that led to what would become known as the Great Recession. James Bullard began his tenure as president of the St. Louis Fed in April 2008, just as the financial crisis was heating up.

As our nation struggled during the crisis and slow recovery, the Federal Reserve did not stand idly by. Through both conventional and unconventional monetary policy actions, the Fed responded carefully but aggressively by implementing a variety of programs designed to support the liquidity of financial institutions and improve conditions in financial markets. President Bullard, along with his fellow participants on the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), helped navigate the economy back on course.

Economic conditions today are much better, and the FOMC is in the ongoing process of returning monetary policy settings to more normal levels. The committee has raised the federal funds rate several times since December 2015 and recently has begun to gradually shrink the Fed’s balance sheet. Through the strong leadership over the past decade from President Bullard and his colleagues across the Federal Reserve System, our nation has largely recovered from the financial crisis, recession and their aftermath.

The St. Louis Fed’s board of directors is engaged with the Bank’s work in promoting a healthy economy and financial stability—certainly the cutting-edge research of its economists, but also the Bank’s leadership in supervising bank holding companies and state member banks, in fulfilling the Fed’s role of fiscal agent to the U.S. Treasury, and in increasing the financial literacy and economic education of our citizens. I look toward the future with confidence as the St. Louis Fed stands in service to the Eighth Federal Reserve District and beyond.

Kathleen M. Mazzarella
Chair of the Board of Directors
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis