David H. Romer on challenges to the Fed

David H. Romer, Herman Royer Professor Emeritus in Political Economy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, participated in a panel, “The Future of the Fed,” at the American Economic Association meetings in January 2026.

Romer identified three big challenges facing the Fed:

1. The rising federal debt or, as he put it, “the looming fiscal catastrophe.”
2. The new technologies of crypto and artificial intelligence.
3. Disagreement on what the Fed should try to accomplish and who decides. Romer argued that these challenges, though they can and should be addressed, are not for the most part problems that monetary policy can solve. Romer’s slides can be downloaded here.

Also on the panel were Janet Yellen, Athanasios Orphanides, and Loretta Mester. A video of the conversation is available here. Yellen’s remarks are posted here.