Into Thin Air
Authors & Contributors
The top of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is the point furthest away from the center of the earth. The German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt came just short of that peak in 1802, setting an altitude record that stood for thirty years, all the more remarkable without reliable charts in an era well before bottled oxygen. Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jay Powell is similarly leading the global economy into thin air. Is it possible to raise the targeted federal funds rate in the US so as to tighten financial conditions, slow real GDP growth back to trend (but not below), and limit the overshoot of inflation? Powell also lacks a reliable map of his destination, the neutral nominal federal funds rate, but seems committed to climb at the steady pace of one-quarter percentage point up every calendar quarter.
On January 31, 2018, The Boston Company and Standish merged into Mellon Capital to form a combined entity, BNY Mellon Asset Management North America Corporation. Effective January 2, 2019, this entity was renamed Mellon Investments Corporation.
