Speeches, Interviews, Essays

“To sum up, economic activity and employment continue to strengthen while inflation remains well above our objective. To steer the economy to our dual mandate goals of full employment and 2 percent average inflation, the Fed has begun to reduce the degree of monetary accommodation. Our recent 25 basis point rate hike was the first…

“Today, I want to talk about some of the funding that is available, the barriers small towns face in accessing this funding and what those of us who want to make a difference can do to reduce these barriers.” “Communities need help building their capacity, and they need it now. They need help finding and…

“Finally, the interaction of higher policy rates with a large balance sheet will need to be considered. Raising short-term rates while the balance sheet continues to depress longer-term yields will contribute to a flattening and inversion of the yield curve. Already, as markets have anticipated a rapid increase in short-term rates, the spread between the…

Transcript not available (link to interview provided). https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/29/feds-patrick-harker-says-he-thinks-the-us-can-avoid-a-recession-even-amid-troubling-signs.html

“Now, I’m certain you’re eager to grill me, but I want to close with a few words on what happened with money market funds (MMFs) almost exactly two years ago, just as the pandemic struck. I realize this is not a happy memory, so apologies for bringing this up. COVID-19 may have been a true…

“In my view, getting underway with the removal of accommodation was appropriate given the strong real economy and the ongoing inflation shock. I believe that the FOMC should raise the policy rate to 3% by the end of the year and implement a plan to quickly reduce the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. Going…

“Now, when I think about the challenges of central banking right now, they’re easy to enumerate, but hard to grasp. So, we start with coming out of a pandemic where central banks offered extraordinary support, along with fiscal agents, to get as many people through the pandemic as possible. And, while in many countries, we’re…

“I touched on many topics—the pandemic, the war, and inflation. These are global issues with domestic implications, and when we address them to fulfill our own mandates, we affect the economies of other countries in the region as well. In this regard, the work of the BIS in bringing central banks together has never been…

“That said, as I noted earlier, since last summer inflation has broadened out to a wide range of goods and services. This is a signal of more general pressure from aggregate demand on today’s impinged supply. If monetary policy did not respond to these broader pressures, we would see higher inflation become embedded in inflation…

“So about six months ago, the Federal Open Market Committee started adjusting what we call forward guidance, adjusting how we are likely going to set interest rates in the future. And now we’ve done the first interest rate increase last week, and we’ve signaled we expect it will probably be six more this year, 25…