Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on May 27, 2016 at Harvard
She's talking about her academic past and broad themes in economics, not the outlook.
I'll update live here.
- Fed's handling of crisis was 'nothing short of magnificent'
- QE and forward guidance have helped economy recover
- I saw the housing price bubble
- I didn't see the financial crisis coming
- We're trying to do a better job of seeing systemic and financial risks
- We're better at seeing financial risks and conditions now
Finally on the economy:
- Labor market by almost any metric has really improved
- We've created 14m jobs since low point of employment
- Labor force participation has moved up in past year, that's encouraging
- No of part-time workers who want full-time work is high
- We haven't seen much improvement in wage growth, which is suggestive of some slack in the labor market
- Productivity growth is very slow, 'miserable' in historical perspective over past 5 years
- Inflation remains below the Fed' goal
- Our measure increased only 0.8% y/y, partly due to oil and USD
- My own expectation ... is that inflation will move back up over the next couple years to our objective
- The economy is continuing to improve
- We saw weak growth in Q1 and relatively weak growth at the end of last year
- Growth does seem to be picking up, if that continues and the labor market continues to improve ... it's appropriate for the Fed to gradually and cautiously
- "Probably in the coming months such a move would be appropriate"
To paraphrase: Growth and the economy appear to be picking up. If that continues, which is what I expect, then a hike 'in the coming months' is appropriate.