At the time of the central bank conference, an interview will be published with the head of the ECB that has little to do with central banks.
(Photo: AP)
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), has not registered for the central bankers’ conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The ECB will be represented there by the German ECB Director Isabel Schnabel.
Lagarde probably – and hopefully too – has good reasons not to travel to the world’s most important monetary policy conference during a period of high inflation and mounting recession fears. And Schnabel will certainly represent the ECB competently and convincingly.
It is more of a coincidence that shortly before Jackson Hole, Lagarde published an interview with the French magazine “Madame Figaro”, which usually deals more with film stars and royals. In it, Lagarde talks about her favorite topics, such as the role of women in leadership positions, climate change and the role of central banks in combating it.
Incidentally, it is also about inflation: You can no longer rely solely on economic models, she says, without giving any further information on the ECB’s course. And she talks about herself and reveals amazing things: she reads the extremely complex “Ulysses” by James Joyce for the second time; whoever does that must have a very strong interest in literature – and time.
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As I said, the fact that the interview appears just before Jackson Hole is a coincidence. But this creates an involuntary irony that is not very beneficial to Lagarde. The world is in turmoil, everyone is waiting for new impulses that could emanate from Jackson Hole – and Madame Lagarde talks to “Madame Figaro” about James Joyce.
>> Read here: That’s what the financial world in Jackson Hole is looking at
It also confirms an impression that Lagarde unfortunately still leaves often enough: that she is still not quite at home in the world of central bankers. It’s a world devoid of glamor that’s all about dry numbers, theoretical connections and immense practical consequences. Where dry nerds try to understand a world that they themselves influence – and also mess up again and again.
Jerome Powell, like Lagarde, is not a studied economist. He’s probably made a lot of mistakes lately as Federal Reserve (Fed) chairman. But he has never given the impression that he is not fully in charge of US monetary policy. And he traveled to the last conference in Sintra, Portugal, which is the European counterpart to Jackson Hole. We don’t know if he reads Joyce.
More: Four reasons why the central banks reacted so late.