Nevertheless, I will venture one prediction that I don’t think is too bold, which is this: The values that have sustained and served the Federal Reserve at its best, and have permitted it to make critical contributions to the economic health of our nation during the past century, will continue to serve it and the nation well in the century ahead.
Among the Fed’s most important values is the belief that policymaking should be based on dispassionate, objective, and fact-based analysis. The ideal we seek is a combination of the researcher’s intellectual rigor and the ability of the effective policymaker to navigate the messiness of the real world, a world that includes complex institutions and markets, imperfect and incomplete data, and often-unpredictable human behavior.