At a speech with the above title delivered on 17 November at the Society of Professional Economists’ Annual Dinner in London, Fed Governor Christopher Waller set out a clear case for lowering interest rates. He is a prominent economist and his views will carry weight in the FOMC. The speech is well worth reading as we approach the FOMC meeting on 10 December. He began by noting that the long government shutdown has made some public-sector data temporarily unavailable, but the challenge this poses for the Fed has been overstated. The Fed routinely interprets a mixture of hard and soft data, and the private-sector ... (full story)