Long-term US rates have, of course, subsequently traded as “low” as below 4 per cent and are currently about 5 per cent. This territory presumably looks much more familiar to people who remember the 1950s and 1960s.
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.