Speech Calendar
- Monday February 4: Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester to deliver a speech on economic outlook and monetary policy at the 50 Club of Cleveland Annual meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, followed by audience Q&A.
- Wednesday February 6: Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles to deliver a speech about the Federal Reserve Stress Testing Conference at the Council for Economic Education Vantage Point Reception in New York, NY, with moderated Q&A.
- Wednesday February 6: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to host a town hall meeting with educators from across the country joining him in the Board Room of the Federal Reserve Board’s main building in Washington D.C. to participate via webcasts from Federal Reserve Bank offices throughout the country, with Q&A from both the in-person audience and participants at the Federal Reserve Bank offices.
- Thursday February 7: Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan to participate in a moderated Q&A at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business Outlook Series in Dallas, TX.
- Thursday February 7: Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Richard Clarida to present a research paper titled “The Global Factor in Neutral Policy Rates” at the Czech National Bank and Czech Economic Society academic seminar in Prague, with audience Q&A.
- Thursday February 7: St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard to deliver a presentation on the US economy and monetary policy at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, followed by audience Q&A.
- Friday February 8: San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly to participate in a moderated Q&A at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute’s 12th Annual Economic Forecast Conference in San Francisco, CA.
Special Announcement
On Tuesday, February 5, in a special announcement Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Vice Chair Richard Clarida had dinner at the White House with President Trump and Treasury Secretary Munchin.
According to Bloomberg, Powell repeated that the “path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information” and its impact on employment and price stability. Powell told the president and the treasury secretary that the Fed will make decisions on monetary policy “based solely on careful, objective and non-political analysis.”
Video Transcript
At risk of being exposed as a Russian spy, I happen to have a video of the event. It went like this.
Trump: You are not going to raise rates any more are you?
Powell: You know Mr. President, we are of course data dependent. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Trump: You sly dog you.
Top Secret Video
Just in case you think I am foolin’, here is the top secret video as delivered to me by my Russian spy contacts.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Did any of these folks make $1.2 million for three little speeches?
Or – Would that be bribery? Influence buying? Insider influence?
No, 2banana, Federal Reserve officials, like ex-Presidents, wait until after they leave office to receive their paydays.
Somebody is willing to pay a great orator who has no formal government position to speak. It is called capitalism. I mean, it isn’t like Obama pimped his local hotel to foreigners who wanted to buy influence when he was in power or anything – I’m sure you’d agree that that would be unseemly, unpatriotic, and probably unlawful.
A spokesman confirmed that the nonprofit 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee paid the Trump International Hotel a rate of $175,000 per day for event space — in spite of internal objections at the time that the rate was far too high.
Alan Greenspan set the stage for this, but his key enablers were congress and their K Street lobbyist advisors from the banks and Wall Street. Ask any politician if he’d prefer the Fed act as vocal advocate and facilitator of easy money during his watch. You’ll get a predictable response and Fed policy to match. And there we are. The ranks of those who rail against them are thinning. It’s even socially acceptable now for voting Fed members to openly brag about stock market performance, a thing far afield from their ostensible dual mandates of magically creating full employment and price stability at the behest of profoundly ignorant congress.
Once upon a time (pre-Greenspan), you rarely, if ever heard a peep from these people.
But then again, that was when we had a normally functioning economy (and capital markets) and the Fed had a respectable level of credibility.
Those days are long gone.
Sure do.
But IIRC, he was “removed” from CNBC after being involved in an insider trading scandal.
Eventually, they all go over to The Dark Side.