60 years. That’s the median age of FOMC members. It puts their prime college learning years from 1983 to 1988, a period of exciting change in economics. Policy was attentive to taming inflation and shrinking the role of the government. Academicians calibrated how to keep future policy from cheating once price stability was achieved. And the world settled on inflation targeting, with New Zealand the first responder. "It was a bit of a shock to everyone, I think," offered Roger Douglas, New Zealand’s finance minister in the late 1980s. "I just announced it was gonna be 2%, and it sort of stuck." Global monetary ... (full story)