Nick Timiraos
speaker
1,192 appearances
14 recordings
5 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 17 Sep
Nick Timiraos’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.
Appearances
You had to sort of figure it out from what was happening in the market.
Why keep it a secret?
That was how central bankers believed they should behave in those times.
The governor of the Bank of England during World War II had a motto, never excuse, never explain.
We shouldn't tell people what we're doing.
There was sort of a wizard of Oz-like mystique to the way these central bankers operated.
That changed in 1994, when Greenspan planned to raise interest rates.
Greenspan wanted to put out a statement.
He said at the meeting, raising interest rates is like hitting a gong, and I want to come out of this meeting and I want people to know we've hit the gong.
Why did Greenspan think it was important to hit the gong?
Well, you know, if you were raising interest rates because you were worried that maybe there was going to be too much froth or excess, telling people that you had done it would be one way to just make it clear to everybody, we are changing direction here.
We have been doing one thing and now we're doing another thing and we just want everybody to be clear about it.
You keep people guessing.
But if they guess wrong, then really what's the point of, you know, what are you doing?
Greenspan prized keeping his options open.
He talked once about how when he was testifying before Congress, he could sort of see the next day's newspaper.
He could see the headline coming as the words came out of his mouth.
And if he realized he was saying too much, he would just sort of go off in a different direction because he always wanted to keep his options open.
And he didn't want to say something that might limit his flexibility to change his mind a day or a week or a month later.
But he also put his stamp on the economy through this period.
Showing 741–760 of 1,192 · page 38 of 60
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