U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is expected to attend this year’s global central banking summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a source said on Wednesday, restoring a tradition broken last year as her predecessor prepared to retire from the Fed’s top job.
Yellen plans to be at the annual 3-day gathering in late August of top central bank and economic policymakers from around the world at the mountain resort, said the source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak on the record about it. The exact date has not been announced.
The meeting, which has been sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City since 1978, has become one of the premier forums to debate monetary policy.
Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who served two terms from 2006 to 2014, skipped last year’s session due to what the Fed described as a scheduling conflict. It was the first time since the late 1980s that the head of the U.S. central bank did not attend. Yellen, who was vice chair at that time and under consideration to succeed Bernanke, also stayed home.
This year’s session will take place in the midst of a wide-ranging discussion at the Fed about how to bring monetary policy back to normal after years of unconventional efforts triggered by the economic crisis.
Those issues include how and when to raise interest rates, and the direction of U.S. labor markets and employment.