The Fed's Jackson Hole conference: What you need to know

What is Jackson Hole?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has hosted its annual economic symposium in a lodge in Grand Teton National Park since 1982. It's a gathering of central bankers from around the world, academics, other influential economic thinkers, policymakers and journalists.

• The meat of the event consists of a series of papers on important economic ideas related to the year's topic. This year, it is "Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy."
• Fed chair Jerome Powell will speak first thing Friday morning (8 a.m. local time, 10 a.m. ET).
• A panel on Saturday will feature perhaps the world's other three most important central bankers: European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, Bank of Japan governor Kazuo Ueda, and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey.

What makes this year unique? The vibe could be weird. The formal papers and presentations are always laser-focused on economic substance, but in mealtime and coffee break conversations, there's no escaping the broader political backdrop.

• President Trump is openly attacking Powell and the Fed, demanding lower interest rates.

• His administration is using unconventional tools to apply pressure, including seeking out legal cause to fire Fed governors, in hopes of remaking the Fed's leadership with appointees more inclined to carry out the president's wishes.
• It is also almost certainly Powell's Jackson Hole appearances as Fed chair, as his term ends next May and there is approximately zero chance Trump would reappoint him.

What will Jerome Powell say?

Traditionally, the Fed chair uses the Jackson Hole speech to deliver a particularly important and long-range message. In the past, Powell has seen this venue as a chance to lay out an intellectual framework for policy rather than tactical signaling of his next policy moves.

• For example, his 2018 "Guided by the Stars" speech was perhaps his most memorable as chair. It outlined how he thinks about important but unmeasurable variables like the natural rate of interest (R-star) and natural rate of unemployment (U-star).
• The announced topic of this year's Powell speech is "Economic Outlook and Framework Review."
• That suggests he will both cover the near-term outlook for monetary policy — whether an interest rate cut next month is on deck — and the Fed's every-five-years review of its monetary policy framework that shapes how policy will react to incoming information about the economy.

Why Jackson Hole? In the early 1980s, the Kansas City Fed leaders learned that the best way to ensure Fed chairman Paul Volcker would accept an invitation was to locate the event somewhere with good fly fishing in late August. Jackson Hole it was.

• Four decades later, the symposium has become entrenched as the premier event on the Fed's annual calendar, in no small part through network effects. Influential policymakers and thinkers want to be there because they know other influential policymakers and thinkers will be there.
• It also helps that the setting is gorgeous, the weather is usually great, and the Kansas City Fed has done an excellent job over the years of curating the topics, papers and guest lists.

What's the scene like? The event does not take place in some luxury resort. It's at a lodge in a national park that remains open to the public, and features a big grizzly bear taxidermy in the lobby. The rooms are decidedly rustic.

• It's not uncommon to see powerful economic policymakers from Europe or Asia wandering the hotel lobby, amid American tourists who pulled up on motorcycles or in RVs.
• Some attendees fully embrace the Western vibe, wearing cowboy boots, hats, and the like. Others stick to more traditional business casual attire.
• Behind closed doors at the symposium itself, things are considerably more intimate than at many economic conferences. The guest list, constrained by the size of the ballroom where the gathering takes place, is a bit over 100.
• After a long day of economy talk and maybe an afternoon hike, attendees usually go to a Friday dinner with Western-themed entertainment, such as a live show by a horse whisperer.

Who goes to Jackson Hole?

The list of attendees this year has not yet been released, but in the past, the lineup has included:

• Most Fed governors and reserve bank presidents, as well as the governor or a top deputy from dozens of other global central banks.
• Top economists from international organizations and the current U.S. administration.
• Leading academic and private sector economists.

What will make news? The biggest headlines are likely to come from Powell's speech, but the papers presented and the discussions they spur can create their own fireworks.

• The Kansas City Fed publishes the papers on its website.
• The presentations and discussions are not broadcast (except for Powell's speech this year), but the proceedings in the room are on-the-record, and economics journalists (including yours truly) are on hand to report what they hear.

What are some historical highlights? Here are a few:

• In 1990, central bankers from former Soviet bloc countries attended — a vivid signal of global economic unity amid the end of the Cold War.
• In 1994, Fed vice chair Alan Blinder gave a talk about the importance of the Fed keeping unemployment low, which gave some economic commentators apoplexy and created the appearance of a rift between him and chair Alan Greenspan. (If that sentence sounds bizarre to you, it should).
• The 2005 symposium became a celebration of Greenspan as he approached retirement, a high water mark for the Great Moderation, the era of solid growth and low inflation over which he presided.
• In 2007, chair Ben Bernanke started a pivot toward emergency footing in the early days of what would become the Global Financial Crisis.
• In 2010, Bernanke began the push toward a new round of quantitative easing, which became a Fed policy signature over the years that followed.
• In 2014, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi indicated that he was worried about inflation falling persistently too low, laying the groundwork for Europe's version of QE.
• In 2022, Powell delivered a succinct, blunt message that the Fed was willing to tolerate deterioration in the economy in order to defeat inflation that had reached multi-decade highs.

So why is this gathering special? There is something unique about the beauty of the setting and the repetition of seeing many of the same people, in the same place, year after year. The smallness of the conference contributes to its intimacy.

• Most importantly, there is a sense that it is where important moments in modern economic history have taken place. It's cool to be in the room when history happens.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article was first published in 2022; this is an updated version of that piece.