Economist Susan M. Collins Will Lead Boston Fed

But she has at times spoken about monetary policy. In a 2015 article in The Detroit Free Press, she noted that it was difficult to be both reactive to incoming economic data and completely predictable. Locking in a preset pace of rate increases, she said, could set the market up for tumult if conditions changed.

“The Fed wants to avoid surprising the market,” she said in the article.

In a 2019 interview with Yahoo News, Ms. Collins said that the Fed should reassess how it was approaching the economy at a time when the link between unemployment and inflation was not as clear as expected.

“The Fed is not in the business of making dramatic changes” to how it operates outside of crises, Ms. Collins said, but she noted that the Fed could in the future think about raising its inflation target above 2 percent.

“Some of us think that being a little bit bolder there would be helpful,” she said.

That could be relevant now, at a time when the Fed is trying to set policy against a virus-stricken and uncertain backdrop. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has emphasized that the central bank will be “humble” and “nimble.”

Ms. Collins was selected by directors on the Boston Fed’s board and approved by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington. Ms. Collins will replace Eric S. Rosengren, who retired as the Boston Fed’s president last year following a trading scandal, citing health concerns.

Ms. Collins has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/business/economy/boston-fed-president-susan-collins.html