Month / September 2020

by Erik Jones

Why We Need More Diverse Central Bankers

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome ‘Jay’ Powell opened a window on the central bank’s new monetary-policy strategy in August 2020 by stressing that he was focused on the Fed’s ‘core constituency, the American people’. A few days later, the Dutch central-bank governor, Klaas Knot, gave a speech in Amsterdam to underscore that the job of the central-banking community is ‘to manage the risks that normal people have to face’. This was no coincidence. Both men were responding to a call made in 2019 by the Australian central-bank governor Philip Lowe for monetary policymakers to ‘talk in stories people can connect with’. If former Fed chair Alan Greenspan could once pride himself on being incomprehensible, that time is over. Central bankers need to be understood – and quickly.

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by Erik Jones

The Coming Disruption of Higher Education

I went back into the classroom in the third week of September to greet a very enthusiastic group of MA students from across the globe.  Many of them were in the classroom.  We are one of the very few parts of Johns Hopkins universe that is teaching in person.  Many of the students were also on Zoom.  We started class in the evening in Italy; my American students were straddling lunch time; my students in China were burning the late-night oil.  The experience of being with them was a breath of fresh air after a long time at home.  If you ignored the masks, the social distancing, and the ban on any kind of organized celebration, it almost felt like things might possibly be returning to normal – almost, but not quite.  And I doubt they ever will.

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