No Time To Waste

摘要

Every year at the end of August, the high priests of the U.S. financial system-the board of governors and staff of the Federal Reserve-gather at a remote resort high in the mountains near Jackson Hole, Wyo., and there, amid the Tetons, listen to lectures by invited economists on a variety of topics, hoping the fresh air and proximity to genuine cowboy bars might lead to clear thinking and sound economic policy. A good time is usually had by all- except when the global financial markets are sending out warnings of extreme stress to come. By August 2007, the storm known as the subprime crisis had been gathering for much of the year, and inside the Fed, Timothy F. Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (which sets interest-rate policy), had quietly been raising red flags among his colleagues. Earlier that month, the European Central Bank had startled traders by pumping close to roo billion euros into the short-term-credit markets- an unexpectedly massive intervention. It was as if the global financial system had had an angina attack, a brief, unexpectedly painful episode that signaled what a few senior Fed officials were beginning to fear: a full-blown economic heart attack might well be coming. During the Jackson Hole meetings, Geithner pressed the view that Fed policy was behind the curve; the problem in the credit markets was big and likely to get worse, and the Fed needed to get out in front of it, to err on the side of being aggressive.