The Federal Reserve: I Repeat Myself

Real Gross Domestic Product FRED St Louis Fed

I repeat myself: to begin a tightening cycle and a process of interest-rate increases in December 2016–in fact, to announce in mid 2014 the end of further moves toward monetary expansion and a bias toward tightening as soon as it is not grossly imprudent–requires that one place only an infinitesimal weight on:

  1. Bond market very pessimistic long-run expectations.
  2. The asymmetry in policy responses and thus in risks created by the zero lower bound on short-term safe nominal interest rates.

I have been asking for quite a while now why any FOMC would choose to place such an infinitesimal weight not on just one but on both of these considerations. I have not gotten an answer from anywhere. I would like one. Very much…

July 29, 2016

AUTHORS:

Brad DeLong
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