Must-Read: No. It will not. It would have had to shift its inflation target up to 3% or 4%/year--and then met that target--in order to have what it takes to fight the next recession. Its failure to recognize that will in all likelihood be judged very harshly by future monetary historians:
Jared Bernstein: Will the Federal Reserve really have what it takes to fight off the next recession?: "Someone called me the other day all wound up because some market prognosticator convinced her that a U.S. recession was right around the corner...
...I think I talked her down on that point.... But I think I did succeed in getting her equally nervous about a different point: There is, of course, a recession out there somewhere. The problem isn’t that we don’t know where; it’s that we’re not ready for it.... The main countercyclical tool at the Fed’s disposal is the interest rate they control, the federal funds rate (FFR), a benchmark for borrowing costs throughout the economy. Historically, as Reifschneider’s Table 1 shows, they lowered it an average of around five percentage points in past recessions. Well, right now the FFR is sitting at less than half-a-percent, which gives them very little room to cut. That’s the limited firepower problem and it’s the topic of Reifschneider’s paper. He argues that this concern may be overblown.... I hope Reifschneider’s optimistic scenarios are correct. But I fear they’re not and we’d be crazy not to have a Plan B.
