JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Ben Bernanke is a no-show. No matter. Despite the absence of the Federal Reserve chairman, this year’s annual economic conference in Jackson Hole has again proved a destination of choice for central bankers.
In international banking circles, the Jackson Hole gathering, held each August in a rustic lodge in Grand Teton National Park, is akin to Academy Awards night. If you’re invited, the message is clear: You’re someone who matters.
This is the first year in more than two decades that a Fed chief hasn’t given the keynote speech to open the conference, which began Friday and ended Saturday evening. News that Bernanke would skip the conference was taken as a signal that he will leave the Fed when his term ends in January.
With speculation intensifying over his successor, a spotlight has fallen on Fed Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen, one of two leading contenders. Yellen is here.
Her chief rival, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, is not.
Yellen is among 10 members of the 19-member Federal Open Market Committee in attendance. The FOMC comprises the Fed board members and regional presidents who set the central bank’s interest-rate policies.
Central bankers from every major economy — from Germany and Britain to Japan and China — are here. So are those of smaller nations from Albania to Malta.
Among the 130 guests are many scholars of economic policy. They’re joined by top economists from financial firms — at least those who managed to score an invite.
One issue not on the agenda but a hot topic at the edges of the conference: The campaigns waged by supporters of Yellen and Summers to secure the nomination of their candidate. From the use of Twitter and opinion columns to behind-the-scenes lobbying and letters signed by Senate Democrats, the battle has been raging.
Fed officials here have been careful not to take sides in the contest, at least not publicly. They do agree on this: They’ve not seen anything quite like this summer’s public jousting.
Dennis Lockhart, head of the Atlanta regional Fed bank, called it unprecedented. But he said the jockeying over the chairman’s job is having no effect on the Fed’s policymaking. “The chairman’s leadership is as strong as it has ever been,” he said in a CNBC interview.
