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Nice to see The Baffler back in action. The new issue includes this story from a guy who competed as a high school student in a scholastic contest sponsored by The Fed, and his encounters with Greenspan, Bernanke, et al. The story is also on the Boston Phoenix website:
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/13...nage-gramlich/
I was a teenage Gramlich
By JIM NEWELL
Some excerpts:
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/13...nage-gramlich/
I was a teenage Gramlich
By JIM NEWELL
Some excerpts:
A team of five students prepares and presents a 15-minute analysis of the US economy, recommends a course of action with respect to interest rates, and then withstands a 10-minute question-and-answer period from a panel of Federal Reserve economists. To prepare for the competition, students look at the same economic indicators and the same forces influencing the economy that our nation's economic leaders examine.
And to lend extra verisimilitude to the whole proceeding, competitors are also advised, as we were, to act out the parts of real members of the Federal Open Market Committee.
The idea at its simplest, at least when I was competing, was to imbue the next generation of American leaders with a grasp of the complexities of macroeconomic management — measuring the threat of inflation against the jobs outlook, taking stock of the curious twists and turns of consumer demand, the credit market, and this strange, robust creature known as the housing boom.
And to lend extra verisimilitude to the whole proceeding, competitors are also advised, as we were, to act out the parts of real members of the Federal Open Market Committee.
The idea at its simplest, at least when I was competing, was to imbue the next generation of American leaders with a grasp of the complexities of macroeconomic management — measuring the threat of inflation against the jobs outlook, taking stock of the curious twists and turns of consumer demand, the credit market, and this strange, robust creature known as the housing boom.
It's true that, in the harsh light of my young adulthood, I've been pretty hard on some of the Fed policies that we were largely rehashing to the judges in the balmier days of 2003. But joining the Fed Challenge team was the best extracurricular decision I made in high school. I developed a better-than-average knowledge of all the macroeconomic policies that I shouldn't subscribe to as an adult. The Alan Greenspan Fed taught me about the importance of teamwork and collective, rational decision making, and how easily they can be discarded when a single Randian ideologue is intent on destroying the world as part of a high-stakes social science experiment of his own devising. And I learned that adolescence not only never needs to end, but can lead to a top-notch appointment in the civil service, so long as you mute your private alarm over the sustainability of the latest get-rich-quick scheme, or the American economic system at large.