How Powell May Approach Regulation: Bloomberg Daybreak Asia 2017-12-01: Hoisted from the Archives
From a year ago. Not a transcript but much more what I wish I had said—that is, heavily edited and revised to increase clarity, decrease stupidity, and file a little bit of the ragged stream-of-consciousness rough edges off.
Nevertheless, holds up very nicely, no?
Needless to say, the backdrop here is not the view from the Berkeley Northgate TV studio:
but this is the view from the conference room in which I am holding pre-exam-week office hours:
Unfortunately, the view of the Golden Gate to the left of the frame is blocked by three tall pine trees that have no reason to live, and the peak of Mount Tamalpais is hidden by the salmon-and-white apartment building on the right.
People over the nexzt three months trying to decide between jobs at Berkeley and at universities with larger endowments take norte..
How Powell May Approach Regulation If Named Fed Chair: From 2017-11-01: Anchor: Do you think that's concerning or do you think it's refreshing that Powell comes from the private sector?
DeLong: I think it's neither concerning nor refreshing. I think it's fairly normal.
The things that you learn when you get an economics PhD are not essential to being a good Fed Chair. By now Powell has the equivalent of much more than one PhD in financial markets and monetary policy.
Anchor: Given all the time he spent around Wall Street and government since he left school, do you see him—given that he came from private equity—as having a cozy working relationship with Wall Street?
DeLong Private equity people tend to be very much focused on capital adequacy. They tend to look at how much money banks have put into risky situations, and become very worried. People who come out of banking tend to be much more "well, that's what banks do", and so are more willing to let banks do what banks do. Private equity people are more concerned thanks not wind up gambling with the governments money. Because deposits are guaranteed and insured by the government, they think the government ought to have a big voice in determining the riskiness of bank portfolios. Thus it's not at all clear that he will be more deregulatory than Yellen was.
Powell should be an excellent choice. He was an extremely effective undersecretary of the treasury back in the George H.W. Bush administration. He has been a very responsible and positive contributor to the Federal Reserve Board's discussions and debates over the past years. He is a very good administrator. He is going to be polite and effective manager. Whatever the consensus of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee is, he is going to guide them to recognize that. He is not going to be a strong advocate on any particular side. And that is, I think, the appropriate role for him to take. The question is whether the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee has the right model of the economy. If it does, he will be a very successful Fed chair.
#highlighted #monetarypolicy
