Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will miss the annual Jackson Hole monetary policy symposium this year due to a scheduling conflict. This will be the first time he has skipped the event since taking charge at the Fed in 2006.
It is very unusual for a Fed chairman to miss the event. The symposium in Jackson Hole is sponsored by the Kansas City Fed and is closely watched by investors for signs of changes in central bank policy. The last time a Fed chairman didn’t address the conference was in 1988, when Greenspan didn’t speak.
Reports Bloomberg:
High-profile speeches at the Wyoming gathering have made the event among the most-watched in central banking. In 2010, Bernanke’s remarks were seen as a signal that the Fed would start a second round of large-scale asset purchases, or quantitative easing. The purchases began in November of that year.
In 2011, the central bank embarked on a program to extend the maturities of assets on its balance sheet, known as Operation Twist, a month after Jackson Hole. Last year, Bernanke told the conference that “the costs of nontraditional policies, when considered carefully, appear manageable, implying that we should not rule out the further use of such policies if economic conditions warrant.”
The Fed began its third round of asset purchases the month after Bernanke spoke[...]The event has attracted central bankers and policy makers from around the world. Last year, Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, and Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel, spoke. In 2011, speakers included Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and then-European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.
The Kansas City Fed’s annual economics symposium was first moved to Wyoming in 1982 to lure then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, an avid fly fisherman, according to “In Late August,” a history of the event published by the Kansas City Fed.
Very odd.
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