Intriguing Possibility Emerges for Federal Reserve’s Annual Retreat Next Week—It’s Not Totally Confident of Its Own Model
August 19, 2024
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, July 2024
News Article
Central bankers and policymakers will, starting Thursday, be meeting with academics and economists at the Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole. This year’s topic for discussion is not of the generic variety such as the “Challenges for Monetary Policy” theme from the 2019 conference. Nor will it serve up geopolitical scapegoat theories for monetary policy failures such as last year’s topic, “Structural Shifts in the Global Economy.”
No, this year’s theme is intriguing because it offers just a hint—though we won’t see the actual papers being discussed until they are presented—that Fed officials are not totally confident that the model and tools they use to conduct monetary policy are wholly reliable.
That would be a breakthrough, if admitted. The subject for the 2024 economic policy symposium is “Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy.” While an army of pundits are quick to decry any meshing of central bank issues with presidential politics, both the Democratic and Republican nominees would be smart to pay attention.
