There has been a good amount of discussion about why Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is not going to the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium this year.
He initially said he had a ‘personal scheduling conflict’. Then last week he said:
“I think there’s a perception that the Jackson Hole conference is a Federal Reserve Systemwide conference. It’s not. It’s a conference sponsored by one of the 12 reserve banks. Every one of the reserve banks has conferences and meetings, and this is the one I’ve gone to most probably of any reserve bank. I think it’s not inappropriate to go to different conferences, different meetings, and essentially meet all the constituents I have in these different reserve banks, so that’s one reason, certainly,”
Note he said ‘thats one reason’.
Maybe another reason is that he is annoyed that the president of the Kansas City Fed, Esther George, has persistently dissented from FOMC decisions, so he doesn’t want to go to her party?
