A recent news from Reuters states that this year, Ben Bernanke will not attend the monetary policy conference held at Jackson Hole by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The official reason? The full agenda of the president of Federal Reserve, more specifically, the personal agenda.
This is the first time in the last 25 years when this happens, and the significance of this absence will become obvious in the next months, because the conference will take place in the second half of August.
Why is Bernanke avoiding his last conference at Jackson Hole while he is still the head of the most important central bank in the world? Is he going fishing? But Grand Teton National Park of Wyoming is the ideal place for that kind of activities! Or maybe he has planned a sick leave about four months in advance?
The tradition of the conferences at Jackson Hole began in 1978, as the first topic was the potential of the international trade of agricultural products to bring economic growth. How times have changed! The symposiums have been followed closely especially for the signs given by the central bankers concerning quantitative easing, including through unlimited currency printing.
"Bernanke and the former chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, have periodically used the conference to announce some important measures taken by the US central bank", British daily The Telegraph writes, which also wrote that in 2008, the symposium effectively became "a war room", as "the main central bankers discussed the ways to alleviate the effects of the financial crisis, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers".
In an additional paragraph, The Telegraph emphasizes the importance of the annual reunion of the central bankers: "The event of Jackson Hole is the most important conference in the global schedule of the central banks".
Like they've gotten used over
