I do so because the gulf between maximum employment and the very difficult conditions workers face today helps explain the urgency behind the Federal Reserve’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the recovery. My colleagues and I are acutely aware of how much workers have lost in the past five years.
Normally when people feel uncertain about the future, they want to be compensated for taking on risk. At the moment though, despite the uncertainty, credit spreads are low and asset prices are generally high. At our meeting today we talked about the possibility that a shock somewhere in the global system could cause a recalibration, leading to a disruptive repricing of risk.