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Debt Management in an Era of Quantitative Easing: What Should the Treasury and the Fed Do?

Past Event

Debt Management in an Era of Quantitative Easing: What Should the Treasury and the Fed Do?

Joshua S. Rudolph, Lawrence Summers, Jason Cummins, Lou Crandall, Mary John Miller, Glenn Hutchins, Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson, Jerome H. Powell, and David Wessel

While the Federal Reserve was buying trillions of dollars of long-term U.S. Treasury bonds and taking them out of private investors’ portfolios in its quest to resuscitate the U.S. economy, the debt managers at the U.S. Treasury were moving in the opposite direction by lengthening the average maturity of its bond issuance, putting more long-term Treasury bonds into private investors’ portfolios. With the benefit of hindsight, did this make sense? Does it appropriately reflect the differing objectives of the Treasury’s debt managers and the Fed? Or is it an example of inadequate coordination by fiscal and monetary authorities at a moment of economic peril?

On September 30, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings presented “Government Debt Management at the Zero Lower Bound,” a new paper by Robin Greenwood and Sam Hanson of Harvard Business School, Josh Rudolph of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary and former director of the National Economic Council. Governor of the Federal Reserve Board Jerome Powell, former Treasury Undersecretary Mary John Miller, Jason Cummins of Brevan Howard, and Lou Crandall of Wrightson ICAP served as panelists to discuss the paper after it is presented.

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Agenda

Welcome

A Response from the Public Sector

M

Mary John Miller

Former Under Secretary for Domestic Finance - U.S. Department of the Treasury

Featured Paper

Robin Greenwood

George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking - Harvard Business School

A Response from the Private Sector

J

Jason Cummins

Brevan Howard - Chief U.S. Economist and Head of Economic Research

More Information

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