FEDERAL RESERVE: “Robert S. Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is ready to raise the Fed’s benchmark interest rate at the Fed’s final meeting of the year in mid-December.
The economy is gaining strength, and Mr. Kaplan said it made sense to raise rates while times were good, so that the Fed was in position to lower rates during a future economic downturn.
Mr. Kaplan worked as an investment banker and a business school professor before joining the Fed in 2015, and he continues to view the economy through that lens. He said he saw a clear explanation for the slow pace of inflation in recent years: Technological change is increasing competition in a wide range of industries, making it difficult for many companies to increase their prices…
The interview was conducted last week; Fed officials are not allowed to comment publicly on monetary policy in the week before a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.”
-Binyamin Appelbaum, “Fed’s Kaplan Says Technology Is Holding Down Inflation,” The New York Times online, Dec. 5, 2017