MNI FedSpeak Podcast

Former Chicago Fed President Charles Evans talks to MNI about the outlook for U.S. monetary policy, arguing that the Fed is justified in waiting to see if inflation is heading back sustainably to its 2% goal.

In a wide-ranging interview, former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair talks to MNI about Federal Reserve policy, financial stability and the outlook for banking regulation. 

Former St. Louis Fed policy adviser David Andolfatto is worried that fiscal largesse will prevent the Federal Reserve from reaching its 2% inflation goal anytime soon.

Devlin Capital founder Ed Devlin discusses the outlook for Bank of Canada interest-rate cuts this year and how officials will manage sticky inflation and a weakening economy.

The euro area economy and inflationary dynamics are “still far away from a normal post-pandemic situation,” as supply-side shocks still resonate, the European Central Bank’s Director General for Economics at the Oscar Arce told MNI.

“We are still seeing the persistent effects of the chain of shocks. It is not only the pandemic but it is the pandemic plus the energy crisis the geopolitical uncertainty created by the war in Ukraine but also by the Middle East,” Arce told an MNI podcast, in which he discussed an ECB Occasional Paper on post-pandemic inflation.

The U.S. Treasury market is still vulnerable to bouts of illiquidity and volatility although reforms like central clearing should help, says Samim Ghamami, an economist who is working on the issue at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Financial market-based measures and surveys proved more reliable than macroeconomic models at estimating the neutral real rate of interest during the abrupt economic fluctuations of the pandemic, European Central Bank economists told MNI, adding that r-star is now at similar levels to pre-Covid times.

Former Fed board governor Kevin Warsh thinks the Fed's signaling of rate cuts this year prematurely loosened financial conditions, making its own job of bringing inflation back to 2% harder.

​Former Ontario forecaster and Canada Director at Oxford Economics Tony Stillo says the central bank will want to avoid public backlash against any misstep towards lower interest rates, and says that will delay a rate cut until June and keep it well above neutral all year.