‘Jackson Hole’ has become one of the more important platforms for central bankers, due in little part to its proximity to decent fishing.
The really important event of the last week was not the Democratic Party convention in Chicago that crowned Kamala Harris as the party’s candidate for president, but rather a dull offsite gathering for professional economists in remotest America.
The event, known as the Kansas Federal Reserve Symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or colloquially as ‘Jackson Hole’ is where leading central bankers and academic economists go to take the temperature of the macro world, and offer guidance as to what their next move might be.
‘Jackson Hole’ has become one of the more important platforms for central bankers, due in little part to its proximity to decent fishing. Legend has it that up to the early 1980’s the Kansas Fed struggled to attract participants to its annual conference but came up with the idea of hosting it in Jackson Hole, because the prospect of excellent trout fishing might lure then Fed Chairman Paul Volcker (a keen fisherman) to the conference.
The strategy worked and Jackson Hole gathering is now internationally famous and attracts many professional central bankers, whose pronouncements are closely followed by markets. Never before has trout played such an important role in central banking.
The title of this year’s symposium is Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy, where the debate will, in its own very arcane way, focus on the plumbing of the financial system, and particularly on how ‘liquidity’ directed by central banks flows through the economy and impacts factors like industrial output, inflation and consumer behaviour.
