Kimberly Adams

So I would say that early on when he was on the Fed as a governor, as Rachel mentions, he was quite hawkish and he thought that the Fed was too blasé about inflation.

Right.

that it was going to be too big of a risk.

Now, mind you, this was during the financial crisis or its immediate aftermath, and inflation did not rear its ugly head.

In fact, there were much more serious concerns about deflation at the time.

So he was somewhat out of step, but he was known as an inflation hawk.

Now he has been relatively critical of the Fed for keeping rates too high and essentially being too concerned about inflation.

So

He will have to square some of that evolution publicly, and I'm sure that will come up in confirmation hearings.

He's also been extremely critical of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing.

That he's been consistent on.

That's, you know, building up the Fed's balance sheet, buying lots of asset-backed securities and things like that.

So that he's been consistent on.

And he's also, you know—

He's changed his tune somewhat, shall we say, on the mission of the Fed.

And he has complained in the past that there's been too much mission creep in what the Fed is responsible for.

More recently, I would say that he has tweaked his message, to put it mildly, to suggest that the Fed should be more cooperative in many ways in terms of supporting the fiscal policy.

Rachel, I want to follow up on that point that Catherine was making about his criticisms of the Fed's balance sheet.

It really gets to the role of the Federal Reserve in the U.S.

economy.