Jackson Hole: Home of the annual American monetary policy forum
■ The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, one of the US central bank’s regional arms, invented the annual economic symposium back in 1978.
■ But the bank moved hosting the economic symposium from Kansas City after the first few years to Jackson Hole, a picturesque valley on the edge of the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains.
■ The move was allegedly a deliberate ploy to entice Fed chairman Paul Volcker into attendance – Volcker was a fly fisherman, and the area is reportedly one of the best in the US for the activity.
■ The Fed’s employees are not the only attendees – a range of famous economists have attended and spoken over the past four decades, including Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet, preceding their periods running the Bank of England and European Central Bank respectively.
■ In 2005, current Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan clashed with Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary, over his paper on financial stability. Rajan’s paper would later come to be seen as a prescient warning of the financial crisis which came three years later.
■ Last year, then Fed chairman Ben Bernanke opted to skip the conference, the first time the head of the US central bank had not attended the symposium for a quarter of century – the move was taken as a signal that he might not wish to continue in the role.