Weekly Commentary: Dudley Sticks His Neck Out
What a fascinating environment; each week bringing something extraordinary. Yet there is this dreadful feeling that things are advancing toward some type of cataclysm.
“U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China keeps undermining the confidence of businesses and consumers, worsening the economic outlook. This manufactured disaster-in-the-making presents the Federal Reserve with a dilemma: Should it mitigate the damage by providing offsetting stimulus, or refuse to play along? If the ultimate goal is a healthy economy, the Fed should seriously consider the latter approach… There’s even an argument that the election itself falls within the Fed’s purview. After all, Trump’s reelection arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy, to the Fed’s independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives. If the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, then Fed officials should consider how their decisions will affect the political outcome in 2020.” Bill Dudley, Bloomberg op-ed, August 27, 2019
The former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s piece galvanized an overwhelmingly negative response. Virtually everyone agrees it would be an outrage for the Fed to take such a plunge into the political maelstrom.
A Federal Reserve spokeswoman responded: “The Federal Reserve’s policy decisions are guided solely by its congressional mandate to maintain price stability and maximum employment. Political considerations play absolutely no role.”
Former Treasury official Larry Summers weighed in (from CNBC interview): “The Fed’s job is to stay out of politics. The Fed’s job is to respond to the best assessment they can make of economic conditions and adjust the economy – interest rates – appropriately… But for a trusted former official of the Fed, whose thinking is inevitably going to be tied to the Fed, to recommend that they raise interest rates so as to subvert the economy and influence a presidential election is grossly irresponsible – is an abuse of the privilege of being a former Fed official… It is not the job of non-elected appointed officials to a technocratic role to decide how they’re going to act so as to constrain and influence the behavior the President of the United States – and the behavior of the remainder of the government of the United States. That is to misunderstand entirely the role of appointed officials in a democracy.”
