speeches · October 20, 2022
Regional President Speech
Mary C. Daly · President
Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco
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In Conversation: Mary C. Daly
with UC Berkeley’s Fisher
Center for Real Estate &
Urban Economics
DATE
Friday, Oct 21, 2022
TIME
8:30 am PDT
TOPICS
Inflation Monetary Policy
President Daly’s Fireside Chat with UC Berkeley’s
Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics
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Mary C. Daly’s Fireside Chat with UC Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics.
Transcript
Alex Mehran:
She got on the straight and narrow, achieved a remarkable education, and is
today one of the most consequential voices in monetary policy in our country. So
that is Mary Daly. And suffice it to say, I’ve had the opportunity to work with her
and she is intelligent, diligent, and decisive. Mary, welcome to the Fisher Center. Let
me introduce you to my colleagues who, like you, are serving the public. We
provide housing, we provide offices, hospitality, retail, industrial space for the
public. Money is an important part of our business and what it, we wanna know
how much it is and what the availability is and where the trends are that are
going to affect that. So today’s conversation really is an attempt to learn about
what the cost of money is going to be, what the availability of money is going to
be, and when we are going to achieve stability in the markets. So that gives us the
ability to have some sort of predictability and reliability on funding because the
markets are kind of confused in our business right now. So just to kick things off,
let’s talk about where the economy is today and what role inflation is and just get
it going. So welcome, a pleasure to have you here.
Mary Daly:
Well, let me first say that I’m just delighted to be here. I really enjoyed the dinner
last night and so many of the conversations that I had there, and it’s just a pleasure
to be here. So thank you for inviting me and thanks for the Fisher Center for hosting
me. So let me just start with the headline. It may be surprising to you, inflation is too
high. So that’s the thing that is most important. It’s the most resonant. Inflation is too
high, and it’s not only high in the United States, it’s high across the globe. This is all
against a backdrop, and let me return to the United States. This is against a
backdrop though of a solid economy. We have a very solid economy. The job
market is historically strong. The consumer has been able to stay in the game
despite the fact that inflation has been high. So we see some slowing in consumer
spending, but not the kind of slowing in consumer spending you might anticipate,
which just tells me people wanna be out there, they wanna engage in the
economy. And so now we find ourselves raising rates, raising the interest rate to
get the economy back on a sustainable path that has both price stability and full
employment, but more importantly than anything, just lay the conditions for a long
and durable expansion. So high inflation makes us very fragile, makes us very
vulnerable to episodes of volatility, to we get a shock. Our inflation’s already high.
We can’t really bear it as well. So that’s why you hear the Fed officials again and
again and again, Chair Powell in these press conferences. All of us, as we go out
and speak to people like yourself, saying we are resolute and united on the
commitment to bringing inflation down, ultimately that’s a foundational variable
for everything else we want to do. I feel confident that this is achievable in part
because, we again, have a really solid economy. We can name the hardships, but
you can easily turn around and name the strengths that we are tightening into.
And so that’s what gives me the confidence that we can get this done. And I know
everybody wants to know, is it a soft landing, a smooth landing? This is a landing.
So let’s take those words out for a minute. Let’s talk about a landing that is one
where everyone recognizes that the tradeoffs of getting inflation down are worth
the process we have to go through to get there. And I think that’s where I hear
more and more Americans saying, yes, please give us the relief whether they’re in
business, small business, real estate. We all know that things are too frothy on the
inflation side and they really have to be, pulled into a more sustainable place. But
ultimately the price of stability goal we have is 2% and there’s no number you can
calculate on inflation right now that’s hitting 2%.
Alex Mehran:
So the concept of neutral rate is important in your thinking.
Mary Daly:
It is.
Alex Mehran:
And Milton Friedman famously said that monetary policy acts with lagging and
variable effects. And let’s talk about the neutral rate and for the audience, why
don’t you define it.
Mary Daly:
Sure.
Alex Mehran:
And go into where we are right now vis-a-vis that neutral rate. Neutral rate is the
rate at which the interest rates are neither expansionary or contractionary. So tell
us there, but they’re more dynamics besides that.
Mary Daly:
Absolutely. So we look at this concept. So the question that is really fundamental is
what’s the rate that the funds rate would be set at where we’re either stimulating
the economy or tightening the economy, that’s the sort of benchmark rate. And we
came into the pandemic with that benchmark rate at about 2.5%, in nominal terms,
that was 2% inflation plus 0.5 real neutral rate. That’s pretty low historically. And
that’s why you saw interest rate space across the globe be really, really low is
because 2.5 is, if that’s your study state rate, then anything above 2.5 is tightening
and anything below 2.5, and there’s not a lot of room between 2.5 and zero. So
that’s where you hear people talk about the zero lower bound being a binding
constraint about how much policy we can support and provide. So those are the
conditions we came in with. So now we find ourselves in a slightly different world.
There’s not a lot of evidence that the real neutral rate has moved up. Some would,
we run lots of models in academic circles. in the Fed and I looked at 11 models just
thinking about today, looked at 11 different models, and the estimates range from,
it’s really negative, the real neutral rate, it’s really, really positive. So in other words,
there’s not a lot of, in my judgment, evidence to say we should change from that
concept of the real neutral is probably 0.5. So that’s a good benchmark. And if you
look at the summary of economic projections that the Fed puts out, that’s really
the longer run sense of that.
Alex Mehran:
How do you get there?
Mary Daly:
How do you get there? So you get there because you ask the question, basically
the neutral rate of interest is just the price of money in a study state economy. So
when there’s no shocks to the economy that are pushing it forward or pulling it
back, what do you think is the supply of funds and the demand for funds will
deliver and why is it low? Why is the neutral rate lower than it was historically?
Well, because two things are true. We have an aging population and that
produces a large amount of savings because people hang onto their money and
we have slow productivity growth, relative to periods in history, which means
there’s less demand for investment. So low demand for investment and lots and lots
of savings pushes the price of money down. And that’s just the demand and
supply piece. And that’s what’s happening in the study state. And people will also
talk about a variety of other things that might be doing it. But if you just think
about the global savings plot relative the demand for projects, the demand for
funding projects, then you can get to this idea. So there’s really nothing to suggest
that the population demographics have changed and the aging of the
population is a global phenomena. And we are just at the beginnings of that. the
tsunami as people call it of aging, is a upon us and it’s only going to continue to
move through. So that’s not going to be an important, that won’t change. There’s
no evidence right now that productivity growth is surging in a fundamental way. It
fluctuates from quarter to quarter, but there’s no fundamental change. There
might be down the road, but there’s no sense of that. And global growth with a
slower growth in the labor force, because more and more older people are retiring
and there’s not new cohorts to take their place. Then the slower labor force growth
globally and slower, average productivity growth just means slower growth
globally than we are used to seeing. So all of those factors mean a low neutral
rate of interest and that’s how you get to this 0.5. And you stay kind of at 0.5. Now
I’m always open.
Alex Mehran:
But Mary, do the math. Do the math. What numbers are you using to get there.
Mary Daly:
To .5?
Alex Mehran:
Right.
Mary Daly:
To .5? You really just take the amount of savings in the economy and the amount of
demand for investment and it equilibrates on a price of money of 0.5, an interest
rate that’s normal. And you can do it as a variety of ways. You can do it bottom up,
top down. But that’s how these models work.
Alex Mehran:
And this is the real rate?
Mary Daly:
This is the real rate. So then the biggest question though is, most people don’t think
in real terms. I know investors do, but average people don’t think in real terms and
the funds rate is not computed in real terms. We computed in nominal terms to
communicate about it. And this is the piece that’s different. So let’s just assume for
the sake of, the discussion that 0.5 is the real neutral rate of interest and it didn’t
change very much for the reasons I said, what has changed is inflation and
inflation expectations even. So if you thought the nominal neutral coming into this
was 2.5%, 2% inflation target and .5 real neutral, well then you, you think it’s a little
bit higher. So there’s a lot of ways people think about this, but here’s how we think
about it in San Francisco, and I think it’s a really good benchmark, is you just look a
year ahead at inflation expectations, longer run inflation expectations one year
ahead. So you can compute longer run inflation expectation one year ahead, two
year ahead, three year ahead frequencies. And what you find is that they’re
hovering around, between 2.5 and and three. So a good benchmark for the
nominal neutral rate of interest right now is 2.5 plus 2.5 or if you want, there’s
always a range. This is not a variable with that capital T truth, this is an estimated
concept, rather than something we can observe. When you asked as how you get
there, it’s based on models and data and it’s estimates. But I think a really decent
benchmark is, the nominal neutrals between three and 3.5 right now. So this is
really important as we talked about the pace of tightening. So we’ve just got the
interest rate up, the funds rate up to three to 3.25. So depending on where you
want to be in that range of the neutral rate three or 3.5, we are either at neutral
and you know, kind of just at neutral, or we’re a little bit below neutral still. So
essentially we’ve been doing all this, what people have set termed aggressive
tightening, just to get up to neutral the place where we’re not stimulating the
economy, anything preceding that was adding stimulus to an economy that’s
already demonstrated it can function well on its own and in fact is so high
functioning, it’s producing too much inflation. So those are the metrics that I use is,
and you have to, one of the roles of a of good central banking is constant data
dependence. We literally have to take an estimate of what we think it is and then
watch all the time about whether our estimate is off and recalibrate it. And so
some things that we would use to imagine, to think about whether we’re we’re
missing on the neutral rate of interest is really, is the economy slowing much more
than we anticipated, given where we are? And we haven’t seen any evidence of
that. So I still came in with the idea that, you know, 3%, little bit over 3% is probably
a good estimate of the nominal neutral and continued rate increases are gonna
be required if we’re going to get ourselves into restrictive territory, which the
inflation data clearly demonstrate that we need.
Alex Mehran:
So how do do you justify a 3% target when the PCE is over 6%?
Mary Daly:
It’s really about inflation expectation. So if we just.
Alex Mehran:
But still it’s been, we’ve gotten there and it’s stayed there, it’s sticky. How do you
justify it?
Mary Daly:
So by justify, let me just go through this is the benchmark rate, that’s not the settling
rate. We need to be up higher in terms of the actual funds rate. We have to be
above the benchmark neutral rate in order to restrict the economy. So I wanna
separate those two things. The estimate of the neutral rate really comes off
inflation expectations because realized inflation bounces around the Fed reserve
bases a lot. I mean our credibility holds the anchor on inflation expectations. That’s
what we want. If inflation expectations get de anchored and they just move one
for one with realized inflation, well then you’re back into the 1970s and that’s a
painful experience. We haven’t, we don’t have that right now. If you look at the
data on realized inflation, the 6%, versus inflation expectations, medium and
longer run inflation expectations have remained remarkably stable, despite the
fact that we’ve got these really high prints on inflation.
Alex Mehran:
And how do you get, how do you get that expectation number?
Mary Daly:
So there’s three ways that, there’s three concepts that we use and we use all of
them. Another thing that is important I think for everybody to know is that if you
are doing good central banking, you can’t rely on a single data source. We always
say we’re data dependent, but we can’t be data point dependent. That’s a terrible
way to, to think about policy because we need a dashboard of data. Janet Yellen
actually famously started this idea of a dashboard of data. We’ve always been
looking at a preponderance of evidence, I would call it as a, in my training as a
research economist. But the data dashboard, I think that really makes a lot of
sense. So think about three ways we can look at inflation expectations. There’s
consumer surveys, the Michigan survey you might have heard of for consumers.
There’s also the New York Fed survey on consumer inflation expectations. And
they’re asking at the one year, short term, the medium term and then five years
out, what do you expect it to be? The second way we get it is from what I would
call market based inflation expectations. And those are really surveys of market
participants and also trades they’re making on futures, on tips or inflation
protected securities. We can back out what they expect inflation to be by based
on how much money they’re willing to pay for for the protection. And if you look at
all three of those, they start at different levels and and things of that sort. But if you
look at all three of those, what you see is the same pattern. Short term inflation
expectations go up because that’s just being reactive to the data. You think gas is
high today, gas will be high tomorrow. But if you look at the medium and longer
run, you see that the realized inflation we have coming in has really not moved
those medium and longer run inflation expectations in the same way. So that’s why
I, when I’m calculating the nominal neutral, I’m looking at those medium and longer
run inflation expectations as opposed to just the short run, because I know the
short run have all this, all this stuff that we already know is in train, gas prices,
rental price inflation, which we know is starting to slow, but takes a while to fully
move through the new leases are lower in price, but it takes a long time for new
leases to be generated so that you get an average lease that’s lower in value. So
those are things that I would think are in train in the inflation data and we don’t
want to be too reactive to those pieces of information because you could easily
find yourself over tightening and then putting the economy into an unforced
downturn, unforced by meaning we don’t need to be that down in order to re
restore price stability. So that’s how I think about it. And so, again, and maybe I’ll let
you pull this further, but I want to, I would like to maybe talk about, Alex, the idea
that there’s really two stages of monetary policy movements. One is the stage
we’re just completing, which is get the rate up to neutral. And the second stage is
how much do you have to tighten, how restrictive do we need to make policy to
restore price stability?
Alex Mehran:
So where is the medium and long term, what, what, what, what, what kind of
timeframe are you looking at?
Mary Daly:
So the medium and long term is really, the medium term is usually a three-year
window.
Alex Mehran:
Cool.
Mary Daly:
And then the longer run is a five year window that doesn’t, I wouldn’t say, well let’s
look at the summary of economic projections. I still think oftentimes, and I’ve been
quoted as saying this, so it won’t be surprising to people if they hear it so, is that
the summary of economic projections is SEP, which the Federal Reserve puts out
four times a year and all FMC participants participate in it, sometimes is only as
good as the day that is printed because it, it is telling you where we think as of
that day and then the world changes. But I think in this case, the one we released
in September is actually a fairly good indication of where things are looking. And
if you look at the SEP and the projections, what you see is growth below trend in
23, GDP growth below trend, policy tightening that gets the rate up next year
between 4.5% and 5%. That one policy tightening that raises and then holds,
because we have to keep the rate at a tightened level, tightening level in order to
fully reestablish price stability. And you also see the unemployment rate rise to the
mid fours and you see inflation come down at the end of 23 to around 3%. So you
might ask, well why isn’t it 2%? And that’s really because it takes time. I mean we
were printing it at very high numbers and it takes time to bring it back down as
these things work them their way through. And we get to something closer to 2%
at the end of 24. But I think that’s a fairly good, from my vantage point, just
speaking for myself, for me that still is a fairly good projection of what my
expectation about the evolution of the economy will be. But all of that’s
predicated on the, there’s not more additional shocks that we haven’t seen yet
that come out. And also that we continue to raise rates to fully get the economy
into that policy, rather, into that restrictive stance, so that the economy can
actually get back to a sustainable pace that has price stability and a good labor
market and strong demand for goods and services.
Alex Mehran:
So in the short term, you’re about three percentage points above that, that long
term inflationary rate, right? Three and a half percent. So how do you deal with the
issue of trying to contract things in the short term knowing that that long term rate
is where you’re headed so you don’t overshoot?
Mary Daly:
Sure. So I think of it this way, ’cause I find it a helpful discipline. So if you look at the
data, it’s really, this is a been a phenomenal period if you, there’s several charts out
there that talk about this, but it’s really a phenomenal, it’s been a phenomenal
period, the forward guidance. So we have three tools really, and I stack rank them
in their, in their effectiveness this way, we have the funds, right? That’s a very
effective tool. We have used it historically, we know how it works, it’s reliably
deployed. We have forward guidance, which we’ve used for quite a while, but it is
gaining in power if you look at the data and then we have our balance sheet
policy. So forward guidance this time around has been very helpful because
remember in November of 2021, it becomes clear that the labor market is actually
not just having a reopening strength, but it actually has real strength. It becomes
clear that inflation is going to be more persistent and spread to sectors other than
just the pandemic related ones. It’s gonna move, starts moving out of used cars
and into core services. And so we see that and so we’re, we’ve got this balance
sheet that we are still purchasing and we don’t wanna disrupt financial markets.
So we start talking about we’re gonna quicken the pace of tapering, tapering our
asset purchases and be in position to start raising rates earlier than we had
previously thought. Markets start repricing. If I had a chart I’d show it to you, but
financial market, financial conditions start to tighten right away. So then we roll
forward to march, we raise the rate, we’ve lift off 25 basis points and mortgage
interest rates go from under three to close to five in a period of three weeks. And
that is a remarkable response that says that the monetary policy transmission
mechanism from words and forward guidance to financial market conditions and
tightening has become very quick. So that’s a good thing. It means we’re much
more nimble than we have been in the past because we do have that forward
guidance tool. But it is not the case that the rates to the economy has really
changed very much. So if I was talking to the late great Milton Friedman, you’d say
it is long in variable lags. It might not be long in variable in the words to financial
conditions, but it remains long in variable in the financial conditions to the
economy. And you see that right now. So what what then can happen, well if you
keep tightening and tightening and tightening until you see literally the lagging
variables that we’re so interested in, what are the two most lagging variables in
our portfolio variables? Inflation and unemployment. They lag, they lag, they lag.
So if we were gonna tighten until those variables return to their study state values,
well we could easily find ourselves in all likelihood would find ourselves in having
over tightened the economy so significantly because we didn’t understand or we
weren’t paying attention to, the fact that this tightening is moving its way through
the system. So let rest assured we’re not, that’s not how we think about it. That’s not
how I think about it. It’s really about how much of this pent up tightening, that’s
already in the system, is moving its way through the economy. And I would say a
little bit of it, right? We’re already seeing housing markets slow considerably, new
leases on rentals are slowing, the consumer demand is, it’s not slow but it’s not
rising at the rapid pace. The labor market came off of a north of 300,000 a month
job pace to something over just over 200,000. So still pretty robust, but definitely
slowing. So you see those things starting to take hold. But the question then is, do
we need more? And in my judgment more is needed because you know, even if we
said, wow, there’s a lot of slowing right now, 200,000 jobs, I’d just like to put in this
terms, ’cause it’s easy to understand, 200,000 jobs is about a hundred thousand
jobs more per month than we need just to hold unemployment steady, right? We’re
only bringing in, depending on the month, a hundred thousand new workers are
reentering workers, in the US economy. So every time we run job growth, every
time job growth prints faster than that, that’s more pressure on the labor market.
Wages go up, wage growth goes up, passes on to inflation and you find yourself
with, things that are, the dynamics that push inflation up. So I think more is needed
to get us into restrictive territory, but as we approach what restrictive territory,
and this is the second stage of policy, so the first stage of policy is raise the rate to
get it up to neutral and you can be fast, we know we shouldn’t be
accommodating, so let’s be as aggressive and get up there fast. The second stage
of policy making in my, this is how I think of it. I mean I should say all the remarks I
make today are my own, and do not necessarily reflect any other fed reserve
official. So that’s just the blanket. So then I can stop having the awkward
interruption of myself. But I do wanna share how I think about it. The way I think of
this is that now we’re in stage two and stage two of policy is we need to be
thoughtful about how restrictive we need to be. And that means we have to be
incredibly data dependent because we have to watch these incoming indicators.
We have to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power not to over tighten
and we can’t pull up too fast and say we’re done because you, that’s what we did
in the seventies as a central bank. We stopped when it showed any signs of
cooling and then we found ourselves with a redoubling of inflation, which actually
really solidified inflation expectations because that change before we’re really
done, is very injurious to psychology. People think, oh they’re finished, my prices
are still high and rising. I don’t think they’re gonna really do this. I’m gonna price this
into my wage contracts. I’m pricing to my rental contracts. And so that’s, we don’t
want that. So the risks are on both sides, under tightening, over tightening. And
that’s why this data dependence and not necessarily, and this is why you’re
starting to hear, and I’ve said this myself, the idea that we don’t just keep going up
at 75 basis point increments. We actually do a step down. And that doesn’t mean
step down as in pause and don’t raise, it means step down into increments that
are easier to manage 50, 25 basis points where you’re still moving up but you’re
doing it in a way that’s not so aggressive that you, you don’t have to find yourself
in the awkward position. I think you all would agree with this, I know consumers
agree with this. It’s not a very good thing for most businesses, real estate in
particular and consumers, to raise rates really high, only to reverse yourself
because you found yourself over. That volatility, I mean, I just think of consumers,
should I buy a house now or in three months when they might move? So I keep
reassuring people that the optimal policy, the one’s historically delivered
dividends and over time, is you raise and you hold and you let the holding part of
the policy that tightening over a period of time, be a lot of the work. And I think
Alex, from your opening remarks, you did say, when will we get to stability? So it’s,
when will we get to the stability of the raid? And I think what you saw in the SEP,
again, I’ll reference that document since it’s still relevant, is that you get there in 23
and then you hold for some period of time. And that’s very different than what
market participants were betting on. I don’t know if you all saw the hump shape
path and you know that I, that’s obviously not what we have in the SEP and not,
certainly not something I would be supportive of in terms of optimal policy. You
always have to be nimble, if conditions change, you change the policy. But as a
policy projection, it’s the raise and hold that has paid the dividends.
Alex Mehran:
So let’s just pause here for a moment to summarize. So your view is that the neutral
rate is at half a percent.
Mary Daly:
Real neutral.
Alex Mehran:
Real neutral and that the inflation, medium term expectations of inflation are
about three. So neutral is about three and a half.
Mary Daly:
Yeah and depending on the survey you use, it’s very other 2.5 or three. So I think
you could easily say the neutral rate ’cause it’s, again, this is not precision
estimating, so I’d be comfortable.
Alex Mehran:
Around.
Mary Daly:
Three and three and half.
Alex Mehran:
It’s around a three and a half.
Mary Daly:
Yeah, I totally think that’s a reasonable projection.
Alex Mehran:
Fed funds today are at three, three and a quarter. So where do you need to get to
in the fed funds rate to be at neutral today?
Mary Daly:
So at neutral we’re, I think we’re close to neutral, right? We’re at three and a half,
3.25. So I think we’re at or near neutral. But I think in terms of looking.
Alex Mehran:
But that’s a nominal rate.
Mary Daly:
That’s a nominal rate.
Alex Mehran:
And we’re comparing against a real rate?
Mary Daly:
Oh and real rates are, real rates are still, real rates are just slightly positive if you do
that, right? Slightly positive real rate from a negative real rate. So if you think about
slightly positive real rate, so forget about where we’ve been, just ask yourself a
simple question. If I told you that inflation was, in the monthly annualized 8% and
the unemployment rate was 3.5% and we had modestly positive real rates of
interest and since I asked, is that great policy, most people would say, no, we’ve
got, money is too easy to come by in a world where inflation’s too high and the
unemployment rates and labor market’s already strong. So I think through that
lens, because we don’t look at the deltas, we don’t look at the changes we’ve
made over the last year, we instead look at the levels, then it’s much easier to
understand that more is needed. And so then from my perspective, I think getting
next year to something between four and a half and five is still a very reasonable
estimate of where we’ll need to go. But you know, I say that with a double and
triple underlying that the key and core value of a central banker in this mode in my
prudent policy is data dependence. Really being data dependent, really
thoughtful because there’s much concern of underdoing and overdoing. And I
don’t wanna be in a situation personally where because we were fast to get
somewhere, we actually caused ourselves to have to either reverse or we realized
it was a mistake. And I hear a lot of concern right now that we’re just gonna go for
broke. But that’s actually not how we, I think about policy at all. I think about policy
as we’re in stage two. We need to really think hard about how restrictive we need
to be. Clearly, well at least in my view, clearly we need to be more restrictive than
just barely positive real, real rates because the economy’s printing at very high
inflation and we’re tightening into a strong economy. The labor market is very
strong right now.
Alex Mehran:
So your view is we are at neutral now.
Mary Daly:
Roughly.
Alex Mehran:
Any future increases in the Fed funds rate will be restricted, the question is how
restrictive you have to get in order to bring inflation under control.
Mary Daly:
That’s exactly, that’s a perfect summary.
Alex Mehran:
Okay.
Mary Daly:
You can write all my summaries.
Alex Mehran:
Okay. So you mentioned that the forces, the global forces that are deflationary,
which are demographics, productivity, savings rates, and those things were what
kept interest rates low for the past 15 years. Then we go into COVID and we have
labor force disruptions, we have supply chain issues, we have China shut down
and rates stay low. Then, and we have to remember that in February of this year,
the tenure was at 175. So then we have the Ukraine on February 24th and we have
energy and food become factors and things take off and the fed takes off, trying
to get this under control. So the question before the house is how do you, these
are, I don’t wanna use the word transitory, I’ll use the word temporary. The
question is how temporary they’re gonna be. The issues of labor, labor force and
supply chain and energy. These are temporary conditions that will go away over
time and those global forces will come back into play. So how do you, as you are
being contractionary, how are you going to avoid having monetary policy outrun
the inflationary factors that we recognize are temporary?
Mary Daly:
Sure, that’s a great question. So let me kind of unpack it into how I think about it. So
just because it’s a more durable language, it’s one we’ve used through my whole
career as an economist, is that there are, and any time you get an economic
disruption, a shock, an economic shock, then you have cyclical factors that are
playing out and you have structural factors that still underlie the dynamics of the
economy. So the structural factors are the ones that are always with us,
demographics, productivity, growth, all the things that we can think about. Labor
force participation usually is highly structural, but there are these cyclical
dynamics that also affect the outcomes we observe. And I’ll wanna take you back
to the great recession. So in the Great Recession, the biggest debate we had in
the aftermath of the great recession was whether all the workers who were let go
and lost their jobs, if they were permanently scarred and they would literally never
come back. And so there was a rush, if you will, to declare that the cyclical factors
we were seeing were really being transformed into structural factors that would
never change. And I saw this happening. I didn’t think that was right. I actually
wrote a couple papers about why it might not be right. It turned out not to be right.
But here’s the lesson, that people, we all do this, we’re human, right? So now here’s
what I hear that globalization’s over, nobody’s ever gonna do this, everybody’s
gonna come home, we’re gonna go into protectionist mode. But people are
entrepreneurial. It’s really hard to think that they’re gonna abandon all
comparative advantage opportunities and go back to, single nations making
everything for themselves. So I pushed back on that too. The question is, there’s
really two questions. How quickly will the cyclical dynamics that have been born
out of the pandemic and before the pandemic, we had a trade war, we had a
variety of other things going on, how quickly will those cyclical dynamics subside
and the more structural dynamics take up? And then the second question is what
permanence from the big disruptions that we’ve seen, how permanent will be
some of the things we’ve learned and some of the lessons. And so let’s just take
globalization. ‘Cause I think it’s a really easy one to think about is will globalization
be over? No. Do people who make goods now think that maybe they should have
closer to home inventory management because the supply chain disruptions can
be challenging in terms of delivery to customers? Yes. So putting those two things
together, we’ve got several years where we’re gonna figure out what is near
sourcing, what is, how does that look different than outsourcing and how do we
think about this? So that’s where you have to be. This is why data dependence is
so, is so important because I actually don’t know the answer for how long these
cyclical forces will persist in affecting the outcomes that we observe. So if I knew
we could just make policy beautifully, we could write out all the rates and we’d
have all the information, but we don’t know. And so that’s why I think the step
down mode is important, that we step down in terms of the, just the pace of
increases, not the increases. We have to increase the rate, but the pace of
increases is it’s, it’s not just about there’s vulnerabilities and fragilities and other
things you have to think about, which is I think getting captivating much of the
media, it’s really about, we are more, we are more uncertain now about where we
will end than we were when we knew we needed to withdraw accommodation
from the economy. And one of the uncertainties that you’ve highlighted, it’s a very
important one, is when will the structural factors that have been pulling inflation
down, that have been pulling the interest rate down, when will those things
reemerge? And I think it’s not as quick as we might have thought because we’re
not the only country with high inflation, other countries, every important country,
every industrialized nation important in terms of economic size is dealing with high
inflation. So all the major players to the global economy are really struggling with
high inflation. And many of them, Europe, just look at Europe, they’re struggling
with something the United States, doesn’t really have right now. They’re struggling
with high inflation and slowing growth for other reasons. We’re tightening into a
stronger economy and I think that gives us a little bit of a benefit on the domestic
side. Well of course we have to kick into account global factors because they also
affect our growth.
Alex Mehran:
So when do you think that that step down process should begin?
Mary Daly:
Well, my own view is that it should at least be something we’re considering at this
point, but the data haven’t been cooperating, right? If only I could make the data
do what I want them to do, but they haven’t been cooperating. And I think about
this a lot because as a policy maker, I care deeply about the lives and livelihoods
of all Americans and how they can manage and I know you all know this, but it
always bears repeating, inflation is a very regressive tax. If you’re median income
and above, you have ways to manage. It’s an inconvenience. It is annoying. It can
disrupt some of your purchase plans and other things like that. But it’s not the
devastating trade off that low and moderate income families have to make
because it’s, and just the level set it, when I speak to, low and moderate income
families and communities in the district. So I have the nine western states and as
Alex said, it’s a vast environment with a vast amount of diversity. But here’s
something I hear no matter where I go, I could be in California, Idaho, Arizona,
Nevada, Hawai’i, Alaska, it doesn’t matter where I’m at. I hear that I’m making
trade offs between rent, food, and gas. And I meet repeatedly, people who say I
have plentiful jobs, but I can’t work as much as I’d like because I can’t afford the
gas to get to those locations. And remember those people who live pretty far
away from job centers because of the cost of housing. So this is, for me, while I
think stepping down is important and at some point for me, it’s really challenging
to step down right now when we have inflation printing so high and we have and
core services inflation rising, and then we also have the unemployment rate at a
historical low of 3.5%. So I’d like to make the distinction between when you start
talking about it versus when you do it, and I think the time is now to start talking
about stepping down. The time is now to start planning for stepping down. But
that doesn’t mean, and I’ll go in a week, I go and deliberate with my colleagues at
the FMC. And so I don’t wanna front run our deliberations because that’s why we
go, to deliberate with each other and think about this. But you know, there is a
distinction, and I hope this, if I can convey this, I’d like everybody to hear this one
thing, at this point, we have to think about where do we need to get the rate to,
and we have to think about the path of getting it there. And so we might find
ourselves, and the markets certainly have priced this in, with another 75 basis
point increase, but I would really recommend people don’t take that away as it’s
75 forever, right? Because there is a point where you say, okay, we’re getting
nearer the terminal rate that by the terminal rate, I mean the rate will end at, and
as we watch how this evolves, the the raise and hold, as we get closer to that,
then incremental steps that are not 75 basis point increments would be
appropriate. So I see myself as thinking hard about the step down, but also
recognizing we’re not there yet in terms of where restrictive policy will have to be
in order to deliver inflation that is at 3% by next year.
Alex Mehran:
So your colleagues are indicating like a four and a half percent rate into 2023,
right?
Mary Daly:
That’s what the SEP said. And you know, the SEP I think remains, as I said, good is
the, if you looked at the, it was relatively split if you looked at the participants, if
you feel that you are wanna have a geeky fed experience, you can look at that
dot plot and the dot plot show.
Alex Mehran:
Or read the minutes.
Mary Daly:
You can read the minutes. I mean I look at the dot plot first and then go to the
minutes.
Alex Mehran:
By the way, the minutes are the, I find the minutes very interesting.
Mary Daly:
Me too. I’m glad somebody else is a fan of that. I find them very interesting as well. I
find them very interesting. And the dot plot. So just I can share a, I put the dot plot
up on my, so it is on my wall. Every time we do a new one, I put it up there because
I’m thinking about it. I can’t remember all the dots, so I put ’em up there, but I think
it’s useful. So what did it say though? So back to the serious component of this,
what did it say? It said rates between four and a half and 5% by the end of next
year. And that is I think still a very good assessment of where we will need to go.
And then, and that’s the, what I would call monetary policy strategy. That’s our
monetary policy path. That’s our stance of policy. The piece about 75, 50 is tactics.
How do we get there? And tactics, as you all know from running businesses,
strategy and tactics are different things. You wanna keep your strategy, but then
you decide on the tactics based on the incoming information, how quickly you
can do it, what other factors are going on. And so when I’m deciding on the
tactics, I’m thinking about one, how much room do I have to make up to get to four
and a half? And I’m also thinking about, what else do I need to be looking at? And
one of the things I’m looking at is how much pent up tightening we already have in
the system and we’re seeing it start in the housing market and things, I’m confident
we’re gonna see continued step downs in some of these core variables. And I
wanna make sure we don’t over tighten just as much as I wanna make sure we
don’t under tighten.
Alex Mehran:
So we’re gonna see another 150 to 200 basis point increases in the Fed funds rate
over the course of the next six to eight months.
Mary Daly:
Well, I wouldn’t wanna be so definitive. So I wanna go back to that piece. It’s funny,
I say it a lot, but it never makes it into the summary, the data dependence part.
Alex Mehran:
But based upon what you said.
Mary Daly:
So I think.
Alex Mehran:
People kind of gotta anticipate that kind of.
Mary Daly:
I think the starting point, is look at the SEP, say interest rate going four and a half to
5% by the end, by next year, end of next year. And so let me go three things, raise
and hold. Not something to take in mind, keep in mind, right, that this is a, you raise
the interest rate and you hold it because the holding part is also policy tightening
and that’s really the first piece.
Alex Mehran:
But we’re gonna be in a restricted monetary policy.
Mary Daly:
Yeah, we’re gonna be.
Alex Mehran:
Based upon the neutral rate of three and a half, you’ll be restrictive.
Mary Daly:
So we’ll stay there for a while. Second thing is, right now with all the things we’re,
I’m looking at, I see three and a half, I’m sorry, four and a half to five being a
reasonable place to land. I do, but I, I want to hesitate to say that will definitely
happen because we have a lot of things going on. First of all, we have a global
economic situation. that’s quite.
Alex Mehran:
That was my next question.
Mary Daly:
Erratic. And it’s not just.
Alex Mehran:
The Liz Truss effect.
Mary Daly:
Yeah, well let’s move it, if I may. I know it’s the topic of the day, but if we can move
away from the UK.
Alex Mehran:
But let me just, I just want to finish that one paragraph. So if that’s the case, the
question really is about tactics. Is it 75, 50, 25, 25, 20. But the fact is that we ought to
an, these are all long term thinkers in the room. That tactics are really less
important to us than the result.
Mary Daly:
Exactly.
Alex Mehran:
So we should all kind of anticipate that kind of number.
Mary Daly:
Absolutely.
Alex Mehran:
In the middle of next year. It’s a question of how, how the Fed gets there and how
long it stays.
Mary Daly:
So let me add a better caveat than I had before. Here’s a caveat that’ll help you, I
think. If we’re thinking about the rates, that’s why I keep saying the SEP is a decent,
a really good projection and you know, Chair Powell’s gonna go out and give
another press conference after the next FOMC meeting. So here’s how I see it. We
are projecting those kinds of increases right now and we’re also data dependent
fed. So we will be communicating with you if our views change and you’ll be able
to adjust your own views based on those communications. So that means
watching the press conference of the chair, looking at the SEP that comes out in
December, that is where you would see any adjustments to our projections based
on the incoming information we’re getting. So both can be true. I think it’s
reasonable to have that as a benchmark, four and a half to five. And then in the
markets the price is in four and a half to five is about where our futures markets
are on the funds rate. And then the data dependence comes in and you hopefully
know our reaction function, but you also will get additional communications,
right? This is the benefit of a very transparent fed, a communicating one, you don’t
have to just hope and guess and then, take the risk of being right or wrong. It’s
really that we’ll continue to communicate as the data evolve, we’ll talk through
how we’re thinking about them and what it means for our projections for policy.
Alex Mehran:
So hopefully next year’s, we’ll see some softening in some of these temporary
factors that are, that are causing inflation, that the global factors of deflation
begin to play in. The rate hits somewhere in the four and a half, 5% and then it
begins to moderate to, to accommodate those, the reduction in those temporary
conditions. So let’s get to the Liz Truss effect. So it used to be that the, that the
politicians dealt with fiscal policy and the central bankers dealt with monetary
policy and those were the two important players in creating our economy. Now
we’ve got Mr. Market who shows up in London and says not so fast. So talk us
through the global impacts of what happened in London, how you are attuned to
that and what should we be looking for in terms of the kind of boomerang effect
that happens globally when some local incident occurs.
Mary Daly:
So let me, let me just sort of broaden this conversation just a little bit because while
the UK is the thing that people have been focusing on in the news, this is a
phenomena of how things get figured out that we’ve seen many times in our
history. And here’s the phenomena is, monetary policy is reacting to the economic
conditions we have. We’re, in economics terms, we’re a residual claimant on the
economy, right? We see the conditions we have and then we adjust policy to
achieve sustainable growth, full employment and price stability, against those
conditions. So that’s our role and we’re independent and we don’t, move to the, to
the changes in administrations or political needs. We just do that. That’s the work.
It’s always the work. That’s what the work that congress gave us. So then the fiscal
agents make decisions about, okay, what do we need to do to do other reliefs for
inflation or other reliefs for, or things to spur investment? And that’s what they do.
And then the markets, and this is where the markets are always in play, the
markets, ’cause they’re forward looking and they’re buying and selling all the time.
They’re deciding whether or not they think these interplays are gonna be harmful
or beneficial to the economy and can we fund it? Can we not fund it? And that
goes on all the time. And so I think, it’s not, although the situation in the UK because
it was so large, attracted a lot of attention. The dynamics of how this all works, I
think are very, they we’ve seen ’em in different periods of history and they’re
always there. So at this point for me, I think of global conditions this way, it’s much
less about the UK in fact not, not thinking about those fiscal decisions or those
fiscal issues or even what’s happening there, because we’re nonpolitical, we don’t
think about those things. Here’s what we think about, here’s what I think about, I
think about what’s happening in global tightening of financial conditions. So
global tightening of financial conditions, the first and foremost effect on global
tightening is the fact that we have synchronized tightening by central banks
because of high inflation. So that’s the first order piece of information. All central
banks are tightening at the same time. That causes a considerable amplification
effect on global financial conditions tightening. And we have to be very aware
that synchronized tightening is something we have to take account of. So then if
there’s tightening, more tightening or less tightening because of other variations in
country’s positions. So the war in Ukraine escalates, that looks bleak for the
European winter, right? Because prices of commodities rise and they’re already,
they’ve already got inflation that’s too high. So they’ll have real shortages, which is
gonna constrain growth and it’s gonna push up inflation. So that’s a bleak outlook
if the war in Ukraine escalates further for the European economy. So that’s a
headwind against US growth. So now we have a headwind against US growth.
We have global financial tightening that’s more than just our tightening alone
would be. And then we have the no COVID policy in China, and that’s a policy that
they seem they’re gonna hold onto pretty rigorously. But that really isn’t great for
supply chains. It hopefully is less disruptive than it has been because they don’t
have to come down so much like down so much. But it still has a ramifications for
our growth.
Alex Mehran:
And demand.
Mary Daly:
And demand. And so you put all this together and that’s why I can’t emphasize
enough that we have to continue to watch the data because we don’t live in just
the United States. We live in a global economy and those global economic
conditions are going to affect us. So that’s what I’m really focused on. And if I stack
rank the things that are important, it’s global tightening, really thinking hard about
what that means, what that looks like, how does it affect us. Then the second one
is just the continued disruptions from the war in Ukraine and what that does to
global commodity prices, food and energy being the number one, and then what
does that do to the economies in Europe. And then the third is, what’s happening in
China with the zero COVID and they also are trying to work through a property
bubble or boom I guess, and they’re trying to work through other kinds of things
themselves. So these are just a period, we’re in a pretty tumultuous period where
there’s a lot of uncertainty. And so the uncertainty just means continue to act, but
do so with the recognition that uncertainty is present and we need to remain agile
data dependent and frankly quite thoughtful about the impact of our policies in
this environment that’s changing.
Alex Mehran:
But the trust tantrum really highlighted the thinness of the market and the fragility
of the market and how something like that can reverberate around the world. So
let’s transition for a moment over to our situation where we’ve got a balance sheet
of, just short of 9 trillion and we are trimming back at 95 billion a month and you’re
gonna continue that for some time. So we’ve got, recognizing that that 9 trillion is
up from 900 billion in 2017, 2007, 2007 we were at 900 billion. Today we’re at at 8.9
trillion. And now currency has gone up to include about $2 trillion worth of that. So
we’ve got about six and a half, 7 trillion. You’ve got some reserves that have to be
in there and you’ve got reverse repos that are in there. But we still have some
serious contraction that’s gonna happen. Who is gonna buy all of these mortgage
backed securities and treasuries and at what price are they gonna buy them and
how will you most importantly avoid crowding out that is gonna seriously drive up
rates?
Mary Daly:
So, so, so far, let’s just do facts on the so far, so the New York Fed, the market’s desk
at the near fed monitors this hourly, daily, we talk about this in all of our
deliberations to think about financial market functioning and so far our balance
sheet policy hasn’t disrupted financial market functioning. So that’s where we are
today. Second thing I wanna say about this is that we’re mindful of that always
being a possibility. So we watch it and we think about it and this is where the third
thing I wanna say comes into play. So there was a bit of confusion I think that
came out of the discussions around the UK and I just wanna clear it up in the US
that there’s a very, we have balance sheet policies for two reasons. One is to
stabilize financial markets. So think about March of 2020, think about other times
we’ve gone in. Treasury market dislocated in March of 2020. The Federal Reserve
goes in to, because our job, that’s the congressionally given job, is to assure that
financial intermediation can continue, that we go in and stabilize market
functioning to stabilize financial stability. This is critical in the treasury market
because of the important role that treasuries play across the global financial
system. So that is a job. Think of it as a technical job, in my my mind. We are meant
to do this. We go in, we do it, and we stabilize. And that’s what the UK did, the Bank
of England did, in their interventions. You’re stabilizing financial markets so that
they can trade. That is very different than quantitative easing or quantitative
tightening. Those are policies meant to change the yield curve when we have hit
the zero lower bound, so we hit the zero lower bound, we want the rates to be
lower. So we’re buying assets in those markets to get those rates lower. And that’s
a monetary policy initiative as opposed to a financial stability remedy. And so the
important thing about this is we can do both. If we had a dislocation, and I don’t
see one right now, but if we had a dislocation, we could solve the dislocation
without changing our stance of policy because they’re just different things. So we
could continue to raise rates, we could continue to roll off parts of our balance
sheet. We can continue to do things, while we stabilize markets? And that’s the key
piece. The other thing about the balance sheet that often gets lost is that, in the
discussions, is that the effects economists, financial economists, monetary
economist analysts, by and large, the sense of the balance sheet is that the day
we announce the path is the day everything’s priced in. And then the rest of it’s just
mechanical. So only a change would cause that mechanical piece to unravel. So
my own sense is that the tightening and financial conditions has been done when
we announce the balance sheet and the plan for rolling it down for shrinking it,
that’s been priced in. You know, depending on who you are, people estimate that’s
worth one or even two rate hikes. Hard to know. But it’s another factor in why we
need to be thoughtful as we continue to tighten. But say it’s a rate hike, well that’s
already in there.
Alex Mehran:
So you and I could go on forever.
Mary Daly:
Especially about the balance sheet. But you love balance.
Alex Mehran:
I love the balance sheet.
Mary Daly:
Our star and the balance sheet.
Alex Mehran:
Our star and the balance sheet. And the minutes and the minutes. But I do want to
give the audience an opportunity to ask some questions. So if I could see a show
of hands please, Ron.
Ron:
Is there an on button, oh, there you go. Ah, there you are. So first, thank you for
being here and perhaps more broadly, thank you for your service. I mean, the
reason we’re able to do what we do in this room and the way that the reason the
US economy has been so strong and so robust for so much and for so long is
because of the stability and transparency of our financial institutions. And you
and your colleagues at the Fed just do a tremendous job to accomplish that, so
thank you for that.
Mary Daly:
Thank you.
Ron:
By the way, having been under your thumb before, I am happy to be able to say
we appreciate.
Alex Mehran:
He’s from Bank of America.
Ron:
We appreciate your scrutiny and what you’ve done.
Alex Mehran:
There is a regulatory component of the Fed as well.
Ron:
Yes, there is.
Mary Daly:
Indeed.
Ron:
So my question goes to the stress test. So yesterday we had a number of
commercial real estate lenders talking about their willingness or lack of
willingness to lend to real estate right now. And they kept going back to how the
stress test administered by the Fed impacts bank’s willingness to lend to certain
sectors and impacts their willingness to lend specifically to real estate. So could
you give us a little context around how use view the stress test, whether it’s
accomplishing what the Fed wants it to accomplish, and how we as users of
capital might be able to react to how banks are willing to lend us money based on
the stress test?
Mary Daly:
Sure. So the first thing to know about the stress test and that is that the Federal
Reserve system works on them, but the regulatory component of that is done by
the Board of Governors. And now we have a new vice chair of supervision,
Michael Barr. And when Governor Corals was there, he was focused on this. We
were all, they’re always, since the first area of reassurance, I’d like to give you,
they’re always thinking about the impact because the stress tests are meant to
protect us from financial instability caused by, banks not being well capitalized
enough and then finding themselves, then we’ve got much more systemic
problems than just the shock itself. So that’s the purpose. And then there’s always
this calibration exercise of are we doing it well? So I know Vicer Barr will be
thinking about all of these things, but let me just speak for myself. Do I think it’s
working in the way we intended it to work? Well, let me talk about a lot of
positives. We came into the pandemic with extraordinarily well capitalized banks
and those extraordinarily well capitalized banks were well prepared to lend
through the pandemic, which is ultimately what you want your banks to do. Now
we did some forgiveness, not forgiveness, some direction basically that said, don’t
buckle down on these folks, let ’em have a little more time forbearance, etcetera.
And those all were thoughtful and I think helped the banks. We had the
community bankers in this week from our district to talk about this and they said
this was so helpful that there was this, we were well capitalized, but then there
was some guidance from the supervisors that don’t lock everything down when
you want us out there intermediating loans and making sure that people can get
from one point to another. So from that perspective, the stress test, which are only
applied to the big banks that the G SIBS that, those I think have been effective at
helping banks look at their own portfolios, get some continuity of how they look at
their portfolios. So, I think most people were aware that banks of all sizes regularly
do scenario analysis, risk testing, etcetera. But the stress test put it in a formula that
says it’s going to be consistent across all banks. And I think that has been a benefit
of getting banks well, making sure banks were well capitalized and prepared to
serve as we come through the pandemic. So now as we look at the tightening, I
mean, where do you, I know I’m in a real estate conference, but think about where
are we most vulnerable right now. I mean, commercial real estate is a highly
vulnerable area. There are gonna be, there’s gonna be some transformations that
are required in commercial real estate with the change in how people wanna
work. So I have this, I’m an internal optimist. I think that probably would be
consistent with all of you, it doesn’t mean we can just go back to where we were.
The idea that people are gonna come to San Francisco, for instance, five days a
week, all the weeks of the year just isn’t right. So we’re gonna need some
transformation there. And so I think that rhe stress test and the lending and that
scrutiny will be important. Plus we are in a period where we need lending, we
need the economy to slow. I mean that’s how monetary policy works. We raise the
interest rate, lending slows, borrowing slows, and we get ourselves right sized,
getting demand back in line with supply. So I see these right now as positives
rather than constraints. But I wanna reassure you that, the vice chair of
supervision and all the colleagues across the Fed system regularly ask themselves
the question, we want the protection, but we don’t want to clog up the financial
system. And that’s the challenge. If you don’t allow innovation, you don’t allow
lending, you don’t allow borrowing, well then you can, restrain our rate of growth.
If you don’t think about how it’s done and where the vulnerabilities are, then
everybody suffers. And so finding that in the continuum is not a one time process,
it’s a continuous experience. It a continuous exercise.
Alex Mehran:
So the clock has hit, hit 9:30. Let’s take one, one more quick question, Jim.
Jim:
Thanks and thanks for coming. It’s great to hear the analysis. So you mentioned
San Francisco and while you have nine states that you’re responsible for and the,
all these big issues, you are a chief executive of an important San Francisco
organization and I dare say probably the one most likely not to leave San
Francisco. Of course you, you never know. But I was just wondering if you could
mention in terms of your local responsibilities to the city, the region, the state,
what’s the role of, the president of the Fed, what concerns that you’d like to
address?
Mary Daly:
Sure. So one of the things that, and this is really about, this is how I approach the
job. So when I got the job in October of 2018, we do have a head office in San
Francisco, but I have branches in other locations. We have LA, Salt Lake, Phoenix,
Seattle, Portland. Those are places that also would like us to be a presence. And
we also, the Bay Area is big and so Oakland and you know, San Mateo and not
just the San Francisco area. So what we did is we committed to saying we need a
bigger presence. We need a bigger team that focuses on local issues and our
importance in the community. And actually we had a phrase, I developed this
cause I was trying to change people’s mindset. It’s we wanna move from being a
bank that does community engagement to a bank that is community engaged.
And so what does that look like? Well, it means meeting with our local leaders. We
have been done office of civic engagement. So we meet with local leaders, not
just national leaders. We meet with the governors, the mayors, etcetera. Next year,
one of the things we’re working on is, you’d be surprised that, well maybe you
wouldn’t be surprised. The mayors in every area that I go to are grappling at
different scales. Of course, with the same problems we grapple with in San
Francisco. It’s not different. Homelessness has risen. There’s not enough homes for
first time home buyers. There’s concerns about safety and cleanliness. When are
we gonna get people back and will our city centers have the culture that they
once had, now that people wanna stay out in the suburbs, what are we gonna
do? How are we gonna grow? How are we going to attract? These are all issues
that mayors across the district are grappling with. So one of the things we’re
gonna be doing is starting a program where we bring mayors in if they would like
to and bring their staffs into the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and have
people talk to each other about lessons learned. How do you grapple with this?
What are the things so that we can create networks? One of the things that Fed
does best is convene. ‘Cause we don’t have the tools to solve the problems that
most cities and states face, but we definitely have the power of convening. And
when we bring people in public and private sector people, the people from all
these different areas, as diverse as they are, we find that they have similar
problems, similar challenges, and they are idea generators then with each other
and form a community. So I feel very strongly that one of the things we are, we’re
redesigning our front lobby. If you happen to walk past our building right now,
you’ll notice the front’s all in construction, we are fundamentally changing how we
interact with the public. We met with the designer who’s gonna build the
architecture out and we said, he said, what do you want? I said, I want everybody
who walks past this to know that this is their fed, that they belong here. This isn’t
some big government building where nobody can get in. This is your FED. ‘Cause
we’re honestly, all we are is public servants. Everything we do, we have a banner
at the front of our building. Our work serves every American and countless global
citizens. And I think of that in the Bay Area and also all the other states that we
serve, all the other cities we serve. So that’s the way I want to be. I wanna be
present everywhere we are and I wanna make sure that we’re bringing people
everywhere we are together.
Alex Mehran:
So you mentioned encouraging lending from us to you. What encourages lending
is stability. When we know where stability is, there are a lot of bankers in this
audience and when they know their stability, they will lend into that stable market
at a price. So we started the conversation with what is that price going to be and
when are we going to see it? The answer is somewhere around four and a half
percent, somewhere around the middle of next year where we’ll start getting
stability, barring any unusual circumstances that might come up. So hopefully that
answered all of your questions. Mary, thank you very much.
Mary Daly:
Thank you.
Alex Mehran:
Thank you very much.
Summary
At UC Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics’ Policy Advisory
Board meeting, President Daly sat down with Alex Mehran, Sr. for a fireside chat.
Watch their conversation and hear Mary’s thoughts on the housing market and the
state of the economy.
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About the Speaker
Mary C. Daly is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and
helps set American monetary policy as a Federal Open Market Committee
participant. Since taking office in 2018, she has committed to making the SF Fed a
more community-engaged bank that is transparent and responsive to the people it
serves. Read Mary C. Daly’s full bio.
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Cite this document
APA
Mary C. Daly (2022, October 20). Regional President Speech. Speeches, Federal Reserve. https://whenthefedspeaks.com/doc/regional_speeche_20221021_mary_c_daly
BibTeX
@misc{wtfs_regional_speeche_20221021_mary_c_daly,
author = {Mary C. Daly},
title = {Regional President Speech},
year = {2022},
month = {Oct},
howpublished = {Speeches, Federal Reserve},
url = {https://whenthefedspeaks.com/doc/regional_speeche_20221021_mary_c_daly},
note = {Retrieved via When the Fed Speaks corpus}
}