William Poole's Contributions

Now that President Obama has signed a bill raising the ceiling, I am motivated to write once again. Standard and Poor’s has registered its concern by lowering its long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States from AAA to AA+.

I began writing this note on New Year’s Day; the holiday season is over all too early for me as I contemplate the coming year. Along with other investors, I have many worries, but at the top of my list is the budget battle that will be fought in Washington, every state capital and most capitals of high-income countries abroad. As I finish this note, Republicans are now in charge of the House of Representatives.

New York Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) president Bill Dudley’s speech Friday attracted much press attention, as it should have. His speech is correctly read, as in the press commentary, as providing a broad hint of more policy easing to come. During my tenure as president of the St. Louis Fed, I overlapped with Dudley, who, along with being president of the New York Fed, is Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). I know him to be a competent and cautious policymaker. It is hard for me to believe that he would not have cleared this speech with Chairman Bernanke before presenting.