It is a great pleasure to be here at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco conference on “Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy”. I am grateful to my old friend John Williams, President of the San Francisco Fed, for the invitation. And for one night only, John, where better to channel my inner-Elvis.
Back in 2004, Benoit Mandelbrot observed: “So limited is our knowledge that we resort, not to science, but to shamans. We place control of the world’s largest economy in the hands of a few elderly men, the central bankers”.2 You could quibble with the detail here – a few central bankers these days are women and a few are not old. But the general sentiment is not one which would be entirely out of place today.
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