What if a Federal Reserve Governor drops a policy bomb in the woods and no one is there to hear it? Did it really make a noise? That's what happened today. While the bond market was closed and whatever financial journalists were left focusing their efforts on newly-minted Nobel Prize recipient Angus Deaton, Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard dropped a policy bomb with her speech to the National Association of Business Economists. It was nothing short of a direct challenge to Chair Janet Yellen and Vice Chair Stanley Fischer. Is was, as they say, a BFD. That, at least, is my opinion. Consider, for example, ... (full story)