Interest Rate Policy After Greenspan

Early next year, we will experience an event that happens rarely in the Federal Reserve — the retirement of the Chairman of the Board of Governors. Alan Greenspan is just the fifth Fed Chairman in the modern era that began with the Treasury-Fed Accord in 1951, and his retirement provides us with an excellent opportunity both to look back at a period of extraordinary success in monetary policy-making and to look forward to the principles that might allow future policy to continue this success. I plan to do some of both today, but I may spend as much time looking back as looking forward, not because I’m particularly nostalgic for the 1990s, but because I think it’s important for us to understand the nature of our policy successes in order to draw the right lessons to guide our future thinking about policy. As always, the views expressed are my own, and do not necessarily represent the views of my colleagues in the Federal Reserve System.