Saturday, August 19, 2023

The Fed's Annual Jackson Hole Meeting | Brian Cheung

Every year in August, the Federal Reserve holds a small gathering of the world’s leading economists and policymakers against the backdrop of the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming. Only about 120 people attend the event every year, but the publicly-released papers and speeches — as well as media engagements by policymakers — have made the Kansas City Fed's Economic Policy Symposium a landmark event for Fed watchers and investors tuned in from afar. The event has also become a globally significant affair, with central bank governors and heads traveling from as far as Japan to spend time at the Jackson Lake Lodge. The late August event is usually three days, and begins with a dinner on Thursday.


[...] The Federal Reserve’s outpost in Kansas City originally conceived the event in 1978 as a forum to discuss agricultural trade. But over the following years, the Kansas City Fed made efforts to broaden out the scope of the conference to general policy matters. In 1982, the Kansas City Fed sought to pick a venue that would fish Fed Chairman Paul Volcker out of his base in Washington, D.C. Knowing that Volcker enjoyed fly fishing, the Kansas City Fed originally sought to hold the event in Colorado, but the timing of August led them to pick a location farther north: Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

 

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