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In 2006, the Congress had approved plans to allow the Fed, beginning in 2011, to pay interest on banks' reserve balances. In the fall of 2008, the Congress moved up the effective date of this authority to October 2008.
Academia is very flexible, but I had a spouse who was very committed to being a completely full partner in our marriage. I think if you counted up how many hours each one of us logged in, he certainly gets more than 50%.
By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then.
Policy makers should be compelled to take action given the serious costs of long-term unemployment when overall unemployment is already high. A week of unemployment is worse when it is experienced as part of a longer spell.
Models used to describe and predict inflation commonly distinguish between changes in food and energy prices - which enter into total inflation - and movements in the prices of other goods and services - that is, core inflation.
The Fed should not be responding to the ups and downs of the markets, and it is certainly not our policy to do so. But when there are significant financial developments, it's incumbent on us to ask ourselves what is causing them.
At the federal level, the fiscal stimulus of 2008 and 2009 supported economic output, but the effects of that stimulus faded; by 2011, federal fiscal policy actions became a drag on output growth when the recovery was still weak.
For decades, the pace of technological change in manufacturing has outstripped that in the economy as a whole. And, so, firms - manufacturing firms - have found it easier to continue producing by - with - reducing their workforces.
U.S. economic activity continues to expand, led by solid growth in household spending. But business investment remains soft, and subdued foreign demand and the appreciation of the dollar since mid-2014 continue to restrain exports.
We need to keep in mind the well-established fact that the full effects of monetary policy are felt only after long lags. This means that policy makers cannot wait until they have achieved their objectives to begin adjusting policy.
The Federal Reserve's monetary policy objective is to foster maximum employment and price stability. In this regard, a key challenge is to assess just how far the economy now stands from the attainment of its maximum employment goal.
It seems to me that women have made an awful lot of progress, but they probably remain underrepresented at the highest levels of most organizations, for a variety of reasons. And it's probably going to take a long time to change that.
Starting in late 2007, faced with acute financial market distress, the Federal Reserve created programs to keep credit flowing to households and businesses. The loans extended under those programs helped stabilize the financial system.
Stores don't order merchandise unless they think they can sell it right away. Manufacturers and builders don't produce unless they have buyers lined up. My business contacts describe this as a paradigm shift and they believe it's permanent.
Labor force participation peaked in early 2000, so its decline began well before the Great Recession. A portion of that decline clearly relates to the aging of the baby boom generation. But the pace of decline accelerated with the recession.
It's important for market participants to have a sense of how we think about the economy and the appropriate path of policy, to look at incoming data, and to form their own judgments as to whether or not changes in policy would be appropriate.
Yankee Stadium is a natural venue for another lesson: You won't succeed all the time. Even Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio failed most of time when they stepped to the plate. Finding the right path in life, more often than not, involves some missteps.
Policies to strengthen education and training, to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, and to promote capital investment, both public and private, could all potentially be of great benefit in improving future living standards in our nation.
We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.
Efforts to promote financial stability through adjustments in interest rates would increase the volatility of inflation and employment. As a result, I believe a macro-prudential approach to supervision and regulation needs to play the primary role.
Household spending growth has been particularly solid in 2015, with purchases of new motor vehicles especially strong. Job growth has bolstered household income, and lower energy prices have left consumers with more to spend on other goods and services.
Because food and energy prices are volatile, it is often helpful to look at inflation excluding those two categories - known as core inflation - which is typically a better indicator of future overall inflation than recent readings of headline inflation.
Paying interest on reserve balances enables the Fed to break the strong link between the quantity of reserves and the level of the federal funds rate and, in turn, allows the Federal Reserve to control short-term interest rates when reserves are plentiful.
During the 1970s, inflation expectations rose markedly because the Federal Reserve allowed actual inflation to ratchet up persistently in response to economic disruptions - a development that made it more difficult to stabilize both inflation and employment.
Monetary policy ultimately must be conducted in a pragmatic manner that relies not on any particular indicator or model but, instead, reflects an ongoing assessment of a wide range of information in the context of our ever-evolving understanding of the economy.
American workers have faced serious difficulties in the labor market since the first oil shock in 1973. Since that time, the pace of productivity advance has slowed for reasons which are still not understood, lowering the rate at which living standards have advanced.
If strong economic conditions can partially reverse supply-side damage after it has occurred, then policymakers may want to aim at being more accommodative during recoveries than would be called for under the traditional view that supply is largely independent of demand.
Although most Americans apparently loathe inflation, Yale economists have argued that a little inflation may be necessary to grease the wheels of the labor market and enable efficiency-enhancing changes in relative pay to occur without requiring nominal wage cuts by workers.
By putting downward pressure on interest rates, the Fed is trying to make financial conditions more accommodative - supporting asset values and lower borrowing costs for households and businesses and thus encouraging the spending that spurs job creation and a stronger recovery.
The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.
Financial market participants appear to recognize the FOMC's data-dependent approach because incoming data surprises typically induce changes in market expectations about the likely future path of policy, resulting in movements in bond yields that act to buffer the economy from shocks.
The Federal Reserve ranks among the most transparent central banks. We publish a summary of our balance sheet every week. Our financial statements are audited annually by an outside auditor and made public. Every security we hold is listed on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The financial crisis and the Great Recession demonstrated, in a dramatic and unmistakable manner, how extraordinarily vulnerable are the large share of American families with very few assets to fall back on. We have come far from the worst moments of the crisis, and the economy continues to improve.
Firms don't just try to pay as little as possible to get the needed bodies on board; when there is unemployment, they ask themselves how wage cuts would affect the behavior of the employees. Would they quit or feel dissatisfied and work less hard on the firm's behalf if they feel that wage policies are unfair?
My advice would be, as you consider fiscal policies, to keep in mind and look carefully at the impact those policies are likely to have on the economy's productive capacity, on productivity growth, and to the maximum extent possible, choose policies that would improve that long-run growth and productivity outlook.
Transparency concerning the Federal Reserve's conduct of monetary policy is desirable because better public understanding enhances the effectiveness of policy. More important, however, is that transparent communications reflect the Federal Reserve's commitment to accountability within our democratic system of government.
The Federal Reserve's objectives of maximum employment and price stability do not, by themselves, ensure a strong pace of economic growth or an improvement in living standards. The most important factor determining living standards is productivity growth, defined as increases in how much can be produced in an hour of work.
The future path of the federal funds rate is necessarily uncertain because economic activity and inflation will likely evolve in unexpected ways. For example, no one can be certain about the pace at which economic headwinds will fade. More generally, the economy will inevitably be buffeted by shocks that cannot be foreseen.
I would be uncomfortable raising the federal funds rate if readings on wage growth, core consumer prices, and other indicators of underlying inflation pressures were to weaken, if market-based measures of inflation compensation were to fall appreciably further, or if survey-based measures were to begin to decline noticeably.
Business students are very oriented to playing a role in the real world and accomplishing something, not training themselves to be scholars and contribute to the literature. Teaching in that kind of environment has focused me much more on the real world, how pieces of the theory I know can be applied to real-world situations.
Private sector labor market flows provide additional indications of the strength of the labor market. For example, the quits rate has tended to be pro-cyclical, since more workers voluntarily quit their jobs when they are more confident about their ability to find new ones and when firms are competing more actively for new hires.
In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.
A wide range of possible fiscal policy tools and approaches could enhance the cyclical stability of the economy. For example, steps could be taken to increase the effectiveness of the automatic stabilizers, and some economists have proposed that greater fiscal support could be usefully provided to state and local governments during recessions.
A higher IOER rate encourages banks to raise the interest rates they charge, putting upward pressure on market interest rates regardless of the level of reserves in the banking sector. While adjusting the IOER rate is an effective way to move market interest rates when reserves are plentiful, federal funds have generally traded below this rate.
Prospects for growth in the year ahead are solid at the national level, and of course, this can only be good news for the Bay Area and California as well. The U. S. economy has shown remarkable resilience in the face of some severe shocks - in particular, the surge in energy prices that began a couple of years ago and the devastation wrought by the twin hurricanes last summer.
The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. ...The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013.
The average net worth of the lower half of the distribution, representing 62 million households, was $11,000 in 2013. About one-fourth of these families reported zero wealth or negative net worth, and a significant fraction of those said they were "underwater" on their home mortgages, owing more than the value of the home. This $11,000 average is 50 percent lower than the average wealth of the lower half of families in 1989, adjusted for inflation.
The bottom line for housing is that the concerns we used to hear about the possibility of a devastating collapse—one that might be big enough to cause a recession in the U.S. economy—while not fully allayed have diminished. Moreover, while the future for housing activity remains uncertain, I think there is a reasonable chance that housing is in the process of stabilizing, which would mean that it would put a considerably smaller drag on the economy going forward.