Let me get this straight.
The people sequestered in their nearly meeting for 2 days in Washington and who only have to consider monetary policy in the context of a dual mandate are the smartest guys in the room?
We often hear the phrase “the smartest guys in the room.”
Sometimes it’s meant as a compliment and sometimes there may be a bit of sarcasm attached to its use.
I don’t know if anyone can sincerely have any doubt about the quality of the intellect around the table at which members of the FOMC convene to make and implement policy.
While there may be some subjective baggage that each carries to the table, the frequent reference to its decisions being “data drive” would have you believe that the best and brightest minds would be objectively assessing the stream of data and projecting their meaning in concert with one another.
One of the hallmarks of being among the smartest in the room is that you can see, or at least are expected to see what the future is more likely to hold than can the person in the next room. After all, whether you’re the smartest in the room and happen to be at Goldman Sachs (GS) or at the Federal Reserve, no one is paying you to predict the past.
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