Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession

In October 2008, as the U.S. economy plunged, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on banks' reserve balances. The resulting switch to a "floor system" of monetary control, in which changes in the interest rate on reserves, rather than reserve creation or destruction, became the Fed's chief tool for influencing economic activity, was to have far-reaching consequences--almost all of them regrettable.

Besides intensifying the downturn by causing banks to hoard reserves, the floor system a...