A Look Inside the Federal Reserve

May 15 -- Even by the high standards of Washington's official gathering places, these quarters are impressive.

Inside the Federal Reserve's classical marble edifice, a short distance from the Capitol city's centers of power, this board room's ceilings loom 23 feet high. A 1,000-pound chandelier dangles above a massive, 27-foot mahogany table, a marble fireplace gracing one wall.

The trappings clearly befit the man who preside at that table — he's been called the world's second-most-powerful official. And in this room, he and his associates make decisions that can roil or soothe financial markets and global economies.

That man is chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. And eight times each year, he convenes his so-called Federal Open Market Committee to set the key short-term interest rates that reach across the economy and ultimately all the way into American's pockets and purses.

Inside the Federal Open Market Committee

A Green Light Goes On

The Fed meeting is a gathering of some of the financial world's most powerful figures. Besides Greenspan, the committee comprises the seven members of the Federal Reserve Board, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a rotating selection of four of the other 11 reserve bank presidents.

But it is Greenspan who sets the agenda. On days when the committee meets, Fed officials and staff members take their respective chairs just before Greenspan takes his place at one end of the table.

A perk of Greenspan's chairmanship, notes one Fed governor, is that while all must walk a long corridor in order to enter the room's main entrance, Greenspan enters from a separate door connected directly to his office.

At 9 a.m. precisely, Greenspan calls the meeting to order, with a green light blinking on to signal that the meeting is being recorded.

Yet despite the power and influence collected in the room, the meeting is short on pomp and long on serious deliberation about the nation's economic condition.