How the Jackson Hole Symposium impacts the US Federal Reserve

Abstract

During the last week of August 2021, financial markets worldwide were looking at the Jackson Hole (J.H.) Symposium with trepidation. The J.H. Symposium has been an annual event hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City since 1978. It is a conclave of key central bankers, policymakers, academics, and a few journalists who discuss critical issues facing global economies and financial markets, focusing on monetary policy. This event has been held since 1981 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, an area that is one of America's most beautiful national parks, possibly to allow cooler climes for intense deliberations. This year's J.H. Symposium was kicked o, as usual, by a speech by Jerome Powell, who is the Chairperson of the United States Federal Reserve (FED). In this speech, the global financial markets were expecting to get some hints about the future path of U.S. monetary policy. To put things in perspective, since the COVID pandemic-led recession, most central banks of the Advanced Economies (AE) and Developing Countries (DC) have indulged in unprecedented expansionary monetary policies. Central banks of AEs used both conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures to boost the economy. Using traditional monetary policy instruments, policy rates were brought close to the lowest possible rate (the "zero lower bound") to encourage spending. Moreover, to boost the system's liquidity, many central banks, including the FEDs, undertook large-scale asset purchase programs, broadly called quantitative easing (Q.E.). These policies were meant to stimulate the economy and absorb the shock of the recession.