Monday, August 29, 2016

The Fed Monetary Policy Troika at Summer Camp

This past weekend global central bankers met for their annual gathering in Jackson Hole Wyoming hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

Among those in attendance were the Federal Reserve key monetary policy troika of New York Federal Reserve Bank president William Dudley (left in the photo), Fed chair Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve vice-chairman Stanley Fischer.


Forget the other members of the Federal Reserve and what they say. It is these three that set policy,

Dudley, a former employee of Goldman Sachs, delivers the Goldman position to the troika. He dines weekly with Jan Hatzius. the chief economist at Goldman. 

Yellen regularly promotes various models and theories as to how monetary policy should be handled. They are often contradictory but she ignores them all anyway when it comes to actual policy decisions.

Fischer is the adult in the room, or at least the designated driver. He would be chairman of the Fed, instead of Yellen if it wasn't for the fact that he has dual US and Israeli citizenship and was head of the Israeli central bank, which would make it problematic for him to gain the votes in the Senate necessary to get approved for the chairmanship.

Of the three, he is the most likely to be aware that price inflation could heat up at any time.

-RW



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