There is an interesting article in the the Financial Times (gated, but can be read with a free registration) discussing the symposium at Jackson Hole:
- The Federal Reserve in Washington has sometimes been uncomfortable as the hoopla around the conference grows year after year.
- In his later years in office, Ben Bernanke made sporadic efforts to play the conference down, giving a low key speech in 2011 and skipping it altogether in 2013.
And this year, there has been a notable shift in the guest list to highlight “that the conference was never designed to communicate monetary policy and Ms Yellen may not have a blockbuster in mind this year”
- There will be no Wall Street economists present (the 2013 forum included Wall Street economists such as Martin Barnes of BCA Research and Jim O’Sullivan of High Frequency Economics, plus regular financial guests such as Phillipa Malmgren of Principalis Asset Management, all are absent this year)
- “Some of this is an issue around the potential appearance problems of having people from major primary dealers at a conference sponsored by the Fed,” said one economist of a Wall Street bank, who was not invited this year
Who will be there?
- One outside economist is William Spriggs, chief economist of the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organisation for America’s union movement.
- (Oh, and also, some protesters)
The article concludes:
One point Ms Yellen may choose to emphasise again is that the Fed will raise interest rates earlier than planned if the economic data keeps coming in stronger than expected. The Fed has been using steadily stronger words to try and send that message, but financial markets have paid little attention, with the ten-year bond yield close to its lowest level for a year at 2.41 per cent. That could mean Ms Yellen sounds more hawkish than markets expect.
More from Robin Harding at: FT: Yellen returns Jackson Hole to wonky roots
