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Speech
Lake Effect: Views from the Fourth District on the Economy and Monetary Policy
Remarks by Beth M. Hammack, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland at the City Club of Cleveland, Friday Forum, Cleveland, OH, December 6, 2024, 12:00 noon EST: Good afternoon. It’s an honor to join the ranks of speakers who have engaged with the City Club of Cleveland. I’m a fan of your mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive, and I hope to contribute to that tradition today. I look forward to your questions, in particular because understanding what’s on your minds is an important part of my job as Cleveland Fed ...
Speech
Fed 101: Approaching Monetary Policy with Heart, Brains, and Courage
A critical part of my role as Cleveland Fed president is to understand what’s on the minds of District residents and businesses and how they are experiencing the economy. So I will encourage conversation by keeping these remarks brief and sharing a little bit about me, the Cleveland Fed, what we do, and my outlook for the economy and monetary policy.
Speech
Community Development: Paying It Forward
The Policy Summit has a long history of bringing together community development practitioners, researchers, and community leaders with diverse perspectives to share best practices. An aim of this conference is that you will bring the information and solutions you gain here back to your home communities. It’s like the movie Pay It Forward: If each person shares what they’ve learned with three people, and those people share with three more and so on, the knowledge on how to build strong and sustainable communities will spread far beyond this ballroom.
Speech
A Fourth District Groundhog in London’s Financial District
Not far from Pittsburgh in the Fourth District is Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, famous for its annual Groundhog Day celebration. Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day. For Phil Connors—Bill Murray’s character—every day begins with his alarm going off to the song “I Got You Babe,” Ned Ryerson inevitably tries to sell him life insurance, a blizzard forces him to spend the night, and he wakes up, once again, on February 2nd. Now, if you’re a frequent follower of Fed commentary, you, too, may begin to experience a sort of déjà vu. ...
Speech
Statement from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Beth M. Hammack regarding her vote at the Federal Open Market Committee’s December 17–18, 2024 meeting
The Federal Open Market Committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point to 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent at the Committee’s December 17–18, 2024 meeting. Statement from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Beth M. Hammack regarding her vote, released at 9:00 AM EST.
Speech
Opening Remarks at the 2025 Financial Stability Conference: Financial Stability in a Time of Rapid Economic and Technological Change
After 13 years, this series has proven its value as the place to be for financial stability researchers, regulators, and practitioners. It was created at a time when the Global Financial Crisis was still fresh in our minds. Since then, many of you have contributed to a growing body of work identifying new vulnerabilities in the financial system and developing tools to counteract shocks that come our way. The pandemic shock—and the Fed’s robust and effective response—was a sharp reminder that when it comes to financial stability, you can never let your guard down. The Fed has a strong ...
Speech
Balancing Act: The Dual Mandate on an Economic Tightrope
Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, President Hammack discussed the dual mandate as a balancing act: The concept of balance is at the heart of the FOMC’s Statement on Longer Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. In the most recent update to the statement, the Committee said that it would follow a balanced approach to promoting its goals during times when the objectives are not complementary—which is a fair characterization of today’s situation, with both inflation and employment under pressure. We need to assess how much and for how long we are missing on each side of the ...
Speech
The Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet: Some Major League Questions
A third policy tool, one which usually does not garner the same attention as the first two, is the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. While the balance sheet is often operating in the background, it has become a more active tool of policy since 2007. As we normalize the balance sheet in 2025, the FOMC faces a number of decisions, ranging from technical adjustments—such as slowing the pace of runoff at our last meeting—to more fundamental issues. In my remarks today, I will provide my perspective on several important issues regarding the balance sheet and raise some questions that I feel ...
Speech
Show Me the Low Inflation
The Fed is focused on its mission to support the economy and financial system on behalf of the public. Right now, the economy is in a good place, and policy is calibrated to keep us here with healthy conditions in the labor market and continued downward pressure on inflation for a return to our 2 percent objective. We recognize that although the overall economic picture looks positive, there are families who are still struggling. At the Cleveland Fed, our teams are active in communities across the Fourth District, including Lexington, to help us better understand regional economic ...
Speech
Trading Places: My New View from Inside the Federal Reserve
In my remarks today, I will focus on a couple of financial market developments that are on my personal radar: the considerable growth in private credit and hedge fund leverage. For both, it’s incumbent on us to be mindful of the financial stability tradeoffs of allowing or curtailing these activities through regulation, because any time we try to fix one problem, we may end up creating another. This is what the economist Ed Kane termed the “regulatory dialectic.” The rules we set up through regulation have consequences; they provide financial institutions with incentives and choices in ...