Club Lunch: “The U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy”

James ‘Jim’ Bullard is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a voting member on the Federal Open Market Committee that sets U.S. monetary policy.

A noted economist and scholar, Dr. Bullard is often an early voice for change. In 2008, he was an early voice on the potential consequences of zero-interest-rate policy. He argued that the Fed may need to turn to quantitative measures of monetary policy in order to avoid deflation and he warned about the possibility of a Japanese-style deflation in the U.S. His 2010 paper on this topic helped move the FOMC’s thinking toward a second round of quantitative easing. During the financial crisis, Dr. Bullard advocated for establishing an explicit inflation target, which the FOMC has since adopted. And he has argued that the Committee should defend the target when inflation is below as well as above it.

In 2016, Dr. Bullard announced a new approach for the St. Louis Fed’s near-term U.S. macroeconomic and monetary policy projections based on the idea that the economy may experience one of several possible persistent regimes: a combination of recession or no recession, high or low productivity growth, and high or low real returns on government debt. While switches between regimes are possible, they are difficult to forecast. This contrasts with the more traditional approach to monetary policy projections.

Dr. Bullard is co-editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and a member of the Central Bank Research Association’s senior council. He is an honorary professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis as well as other roles.