The Economy: Where is it Headed and When?

It is a pleasure to be with you this evening, and a pleasure to serve as Longwood's Executive-in-Residence earlier today. I've spoken at Longwood before, but it was several years ago. I would like to think that I am older and wiser now, and that my comments therefore might be more useful to you now than my earlier ones were to your predecessors. But I can't promise that. In most professions, the more experience you have, the more effective a practitioner you become. In contrast, I sometimes think that the more experienced economists become, the more confused we become, not because economists are dumber than other professionals, but because each business cycle we go through is at least a little different from earlier cycles. Let me caution you, however, not to sell economics or economists short. There are regularities in the behavior of economies that economists have identified, and there are economic principles that have stood the test of time. I've taken considerable satisfaction from watching these principles in action during my career at the Fed, and I've enjoyed observing their reiteration in the economics classes I attended this afternoon.