The last Current Affairs unit of the year will explore the role that the Federal Reserve played coming out of the Pandemic. How did the Fed deal with its important mandate to preserve price stability? What could Jerome Powell have done differently? We will examine the three most significant policy tools available to a central bank in fighting inflation: interest rates; quantitative tightening; and coordination of monetary and fiscal strategies with Treasury. Since the viewpoints on these matters vary widely among the media and the public, discussions at this CA session are expected to be lively. Bert von Stuelpnagel will start with an introduction of the subject and moderate these discussions. He says that his two objectives for the session are (i) to better understand what happened, but also (ii) to allow participants to make an assessment of what interest rates might do going forward.

Bert wrote his master’s thesis at the State University in Munich on monetary policy in 1977. For the next 40 years he worked in the banking industry, always on the fixed income desk, ending his career as the head of dollar capital markets at BayernLB, New York. In the 1990s, he served on the board of the Financial Markets Association. In retirement, he has remained an avid Fed Watcher, always guessing what the Fed may be up to next, and appreciative of Chairman Greenspan’s one-liner that “if I made myself clear about future interest rates, you must have misunderstood”.

Recommended Readings:

Paul Krugman, Wonking Out – Are High Interest Rates the New Normal? New York Times, September 29, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/opinion/natural-interest-rate-higher.html

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, September 19-20 FOMC Meeting, Press Release

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcpresconf20230920.htm

MarketWatch, Ray Dalio thinks the U.S. is courting a debt crisis. Are regulators moving fast enough to avert it? October 12, 2023

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20231012318/ray-dalio-thinks-the-us-is-courting-a-debt-crisis-are-regulators-moving-fast-enough-to-avert-it

Reuters: Fed’s QT mix may be capping, not spurring, long term yields, October 11, 2023

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/fed-qt-mix-may-be-capping-not-spurring-long-yields-2023-10-11/

Wall Street Journal: Where have all the Foreign Buyers Gone for US Treasury Debt, November 17, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/where-have-all-the-foreign-buyers-gone-for-u-s-treasury-debt-3db75625?mod=hp_lead_pos10

Forbes: Here is the Fed’s 2024 Meeting Schedule and Interest Rate Outlook, November 18, 2023

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2023/11/18/heres-the-feds-2024-meeting-schedule-and–interest-rate-outlook/?sh=7965589b284c

What are the effects of deregulation on commercial air travel? How are airlines trying to reinvent air travel as business travel declines? What will Artificial Intelligence mean to aviation? Are spare parts the airlines are using safe? What happens in the cockpit of a Navy jet when it is strafed by a Chinese jet? A pilot all of this career, Gunnar will tell us things we never knew about aviation.

Articles of interest

Your Pilot has a new job and a bigger plane to fly       WSJ-Subscription required

Electric Planes, Once a Fantasy, Now Take to the Sky

Why Planes Were Grounded for the First Time Since 9/11

Spate of Runway Near Misses Casts Shadow Over Summer Travel

More Workers Are Getting Hurt on the Tarmac. ‘It Was Really Frightening.’

Airlines, Regulators Weigh More Cockpit Safety Alerts After Close Calls on Runways

Delta, Southwest Search for Jet Engines Parts Sold With Forges Safety Records

American Airlines’ Radical Plan to Reinvent Business Travel

Revenge Travel  Fizzles for Budget Airlines

There are a number of options to fix Social Security. Some of the most common proposals include: raising the payroll tax, lifting the cap on taxable wages, means-testing benefits, providing incentives to take the benefits later, privatizing social security, etc.. We anticipate a lively discussion on what are reasonable solutions. Whether or not they could pass Congress is anyone’s guess, but ideally, we need solutions that would have broad appeal and support.

Blackstone’s Tony James Wants Retirement Security for All

PERSONAL FINANCE

No, Social Security Isn’t Bankrupt. But It Is Struggling, Here’s Why.

How to fix Social Security? It’s
political but it can be done

The Right Way to Fix Social Security: Quickly

How Darien should develop its purchase of Great Island rests primarily on the Italian Palazzo mansion and the horse stable with arched ceilings taken from Grand Central Station. Two monumental assets require enormous expenses to refurbish and maintain, expenses that taxpayers will resist shouldering. Our town will have to consider the whole gamut of possibilities from commercial development, for example, the palazzo privately developed into a Relais Chateaux Hotel by a group holding a long-term lease, to a complete teardown of the buildings and cleared into parkland.

Background Material

Beka Sturges Presentation to DMA, October 11, 2023

Darien TV79 Playlist of video tours and committee meetings concerning Great Island. 

Current Affairs: April 27 at 2 p.m. at the DCA and on Zoom. Voting Integrity.

Last year, Current Affairs had a lively discussion on voting rights.

The flip side is voting integrity. Having made a career in accounting for the world’s largest corporations, which requires great accuracy and verifiable data, DMA member and CPA John Wolcott will look first at how our elections’ votes are cast, collected, stored and counted. Disputes in this process have created recent mistrust.

John will then review some possible common sense solutions to ensure that future election counts are less subject to dispute by any party or faction.

You may ask how these might be implemented. Of course, that is part of the debate. Our conversation about John’s analysis and recommendations may lead to some solid findings in that area too.

Join us for a discussion of this timely issue. We should all try to be as well-informed as possible before the next election cycle!

Darien Registrars discuss the chain of custody challenges for early voting at the Board of Selectmen’s Department Heads meeting

Elections should be grounded in evidence, not blind trust

Watch: Black Americans Debunk Liberal Talking Point that Voter ID is ‘Racist’: They’re Ignorant. 

Best Practices and Standards for Election Audits

The Free Consent of the People: Thomas Hooker and the Fundamental Orders

Charter of Connecticut 

“Here’s  the (almost) perfect voting device. More to come”