Five federal financial regulatory agencies today issued a joint statement encouraging banks, savings associations and credit unions to offer responsible small-dollar loans to consumers and small businesses in response to COVID-19. The statement of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, … Continue reading
Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress (July 12, 2017) Chair Janet L. Yellen (Before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.) Chairman Hensarling, Ranking Member Waters, and other members of the Committee, I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve’s semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress. In my remarks … Continue reading
The report, based on the Board’s fourth annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking conducted in October 2016, presents a picture of improving financial well-being among Americans. Overall, 70 percent of respondents said they were either “living comfortably” or “doing okay,” up 1 percentage point from 2015 and up 8 percentage points from the first … Continue reading
The April jobs report left little doubt that the economy has reached full employment. Unemployment fell to 4.5% in March, below most estimates of its sustainable level in a healthy economy, or the natural rate. Other indicators also point to stronger conditions. For example, the number of workers who reported being involuntarily part time employed … Continue reading
Since my appearance before this Committee in February, the economy has made further progress toward the Federal Reserve’s objective of maximum employment, while inflation has continued to run below the level that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) judges to be most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate to promote … Continue reading
The U.S. job market remains far from full health despite recent progress, and requires active efforts by policy makers to help it heal, a Federal Reserve economist said Wednesday.Andrew Levin, currently on leave from the central bank while working at the International Monetary Fund, played down the idea that much of the weakness in the … Continue reading
The Committee currently judges that there is sufficient underlying strength in the broader economy to support ongoing improvement in labor market conditions. In light of the cumulative progress toward maximum employment and the improvement in the outlook for labor market conditions since the inception of the current asset purchase program, the Committee decided to make … Continue reading
Yellen, speaking at the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last week, again cited low wage growth as evidence that the labor market is weaker than the 6.2 percent unemployment rate suggests and that interest rates should therefore stay low. And then she proceeded to cite reasons to be wary of that proposition. Among … Continue reading
In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.1 More jobs have now been created in the recovery than were lost in the downturn, with payroll employment in … Continue reading
A paper written by two staff members of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta tried to quantify what all the Fed’s new money creation and related measures have accomplished. They conclude that unemployment today would be 0.13% higher without the radical measures and 1.0% higher if nothing at all had been done. Chosen excerpts by … Continue reading
Over one-half of the fiscal spending component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ARRA; i.e., the Recovery Act was allocated via grants, loans, and contracts. Businesses, nonprofits, and nonfederal government agencies that received this type of stimulus funding were required to report the number of jobs directly created and saved as a result of … Continue reading
The January 2012 statement of long-run monetary policy strategy clearly expresses the FOMC’s policy intentions: It states that the FOMC’s explicit inflation objective is 2 percent for the price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) in the long run and that maximum employment is associated with a sustainable unemployment rate that properly reflects structural developments … Continue reading
t’s too soon for the Federal Reserve to begin thinking about raising interest rates despite a strengthening U.S. economy, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said on Sunday. Mr. Fisher, a self-described inflation hawk who opposed the central bank’s latest round of bond purchases, said the weakness in first quarter U.S. economic growth, which nearly stalled … Continue reading
Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, devoted more than an hour last week talking by telephone with three Chicago area residents struggling to find jobs. On Monday, she made their stories the centerpiece of the first public speech in her new job, delivering a strong statement about her concern over unemployment, her conviction that the … Continue reading
Ryan Avent, having exhausted his conventional analysis of the Fed’s 2008 transcripts, turns today to a more analytical approach: counting words. I think others have already made this point without numbers, but Avent’s most powerful finding is that the Fed cares way more about inflation than it does about unemployment: There is only one winner … Continue reading