Long experience, in the United States and in other advanced economies, has demonstrated that monetary policy is most successful when decisions are rendered independent of influence by elected officials.
Jerome PowellRead
While the move to central clearing has made the system safer, we need to make sure that the central counterparties have the resources and risk-management practices to withstand plausible but severe shocks.
Interpretation
Central clearing enhances safety in finance, but we must ensure counterparties are prepared for extreme risks.
Jerome Powell emphasizes the importance of central clearing in making financial systems safer. However, he warns that it is equally crucial to ensure that central counterparties have adequate resources and sound risk management practices in place to handle severe and plausible economic shocks that could threaten the stability of the financial system.
In practice
In a financial seminar discussing risk management practices.
Long experience, in the United States and in other advanced economies, has demonstrated that monetary policy is most successful when decisions are rendered independent of influence by elected officials.
I am unable to think of any critical, complex human activity that could be safely reduced to a simple summary equation.
Long-term economic growth depends mainly on nonmonetary factors such as population growth and workforce participation, the skills and aptitudes of our workforce, the tools at their disposal, and the pace of technological advance. Fiscal and regulatory policies can have important effects on these factors.
It is worth noting that 'too big to fail' is not simply about size. A big institution is 'too big' when there is an expectation that government will do whatever it takes to rescue that institution from failure, thus bestowing an effective risk premium subsidy. Reforms to end 'too big to fail' must address the causes of this expectation.
There is no risk-free path for monetary policy.
My own experience is that the best outcomes are reached when opposing viewpoints are clearly and strongly presented before decisions are made.
The problem that people don't understand is that active managers, almost by definition, have to be poorly diversified. Otherwise, they're not really active. They have to make bets. What that means is there's a huge dispersion of outcomes that are totally consistent with just chance. There's no skill involved it. It's just good luck or bad luck.
Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date.
You've got to tell your money what to do or it will leave.
The securitisation of mortgages added a new dimension of systemic risk. Financial engineers claimed they were reducing risks through geographic diversification: in fact they were increasing them by creating an agency problem. The agents were more interested in maximising fee income than in protecting the interests of bondholders. That is the verity that was ignored by regulators and market participants alike.
I think a very good system in a world with a lot of passive investors is one in which there are at least a few entrepreneurial investors, prepared to say what they think, prepared to propose a change in management, change in strategy, change in cost structure, capital structure.
Observing that the market was FREQUENTLY efficient, EMT Adherents went on to conclude incorrectly that it was ALWAYS efficient. The difference between these propositions is night and day.
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