I expect that our new Chair, Janet Yellen, will play a significant role here as she uses her press conferences to explain what simply cannot be communicated with a series of dots or within the statement we release after each meeting. Alas, there is Congress Now mind you, your monetary authority – your Federal Reserve – does not hold every card to your future in its hand. No matter how clearly we communicate, no matter how expertly we tailor our supervision of your banks, no matter how we conduct monetary policy, our work is necessary but not sufficient to the success of the Louisiana, Texas and U.S. economies. The fiscal authorities – Congress and the executive branch – must do their job to provide the proper tax, spending and regulatory incentives for businesses to take advantage of the cheap and abundant money the Fed has made possible and put it to work to grow, expand their payrolls and let America truly prosper. I will spare you my thoughts on Congress (it is not very central banker-like to resort to profanity). All I will say is that you and your neighbors and friends and customers are the ones who elect people to office and whether you are a “D” or an “R,” you need only look at yourself in the mirror to see who is in charge of placing the right people in office to get the job done of putting the American economy back on track. I’d say you have some serious work to do here.
Marzunisham Omar: Comprehensive approaches to monetary and financial policy making in ASEAN-5 countries Welcome remarks by Mr Marzunisham Omar, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the third BNM-IMF Seminar, Kuala Lumpur, 17 July 2019. * * * In his remarks at this seminar last year, Odd Per quoted the book Enchanted; “First time is luck, second time is a coincidence and third time is a tradition.” Here we are gathered today for the third BNM-IMF Seminar to celebrate this “tradition”, a tradition I hope will continue for many years as we can all agree that candid and open dialogue between the IMF and ASEAN-5 central banks is mutually beneficial. Let me take this opportunity to thank the IMF and the team at Bank Negara Malaysia for organising this Seminar and to my colleagues from the region for being highly supportive of this effort. The topic today – “Comprehensive Approaches to Monetary and Financial Policy Making in ASEAN-5 Countries” – is indeed timely given the ongoing work at the IMF on the “Integrated Policy Framework”. I hope today’s Seminar will help shed greater insights on how central banks in ASEAN economies, which are small, open economies, navigate through increasingly complex, interrelated issues in our pursuit of preserving monetary and financial stability. I have no doubt that we in ASEAN will also find today’s Seminar useful in understanding the IMF’s latest thinking on these issues. There are two parts to my brief remarks today.