1) You’ve said that the clock is ticking on the window you have to get inflation back down to 2%. In most of your meetings this year, the SEP has indicated that Fed officials seem comfortable with it taking until 2024 to get inflation back down to 2% on a core, reported, year-over-year basis. Given most measures of inflation expectations seem to have remained anchored, do you still view this as an acceptable timeline, or are we supposed to interpret the more hawkish commentary from you and your colleagues over the last month to indicate that you believe you need to get it back down to 2% faster than 2024?

2) Following on that, what exactly constitutes a suitable glidepath for inflation? In other words, how much do you want to see inflation come down before you pause hikes? If inflation was running at an annualized rate of 4% by year end on core PCE, would that give you enough confidence we’re headed back down in the right direction? Or does it need to be even below that by then?

3) Looking past the end of this year, monthly increases of 0.2% or 0.3% annualize to 2.4 to 3.6% of core inflation. The target is 2%. How many months would the Fed want to see these lower rates of increases before concluding that inflation is under control?

4) Following up on the last question, the Fed and officials have cited the year-over-year inflation figures far more often than not of late, but given the base effects from higher levels of inflation 4-6 months ago, should we not annualize monthly increases now to assess where current inflationary momentum is today? Or said differently, why shouldn’t we look at the monthly, seasonally adjusted increases and annualize those as a better proxy for current inflation rather than looking at the year-over-year figures?

5) In your July press conference, you stated “As the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases while we assess how our cumulative policy adjustments are affecting the economy and inflation.” Many people interpreted that fairly literally, and then when the minutes of the July meeting came out and there was a much more balanced discussion of downside versus upside risks, many of those same people indicated the Fed might be preparing the market for a slower pace of hikes from here. Within weeks though, almost every Fed official seemed to come out to clear up what seemed to be a misinterpretation of both your comments then, and the minutes thereafter. What did you mean to convey at that meeting, and what did we get wrong? Also, is there a reason why you left that seemingly key line from the July meeting in your Jackson Hole speech?

6) Given the issues with labor productivity being so low this year, what do you think the natural rate of interest (R*) is today? Do you think it’s lower than it was before the pandemic because work-from-home and other issues have decreased worker productivity? Or do you think it’s higher because of technology and other efficiencies businesses realized from having to operate in such a unique environment during the pandemic?

7) The Fed has essentially pulled forward a lot of its rate hikes by being so vocal with its forward guidance during this hiking cycle. Given the answer to the last question, and given how much the economy has slowed with rates only at “neutral” prior to today, how likely is it that we are actually already in restrictive policy territory prior to this meeting?

8) Fed officials have been very focused on the labor market and its “hotness” over the last twelve months, and seem to be of the view that job growth is an inflationary sign for the economy rather than a disinflationary one that would help reduce supply shortages and bottlenecks (see St. Louis Fed President Bullard’s remarks here as a key example of that: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-09/fed-s-bullard-leans-more-strongly-to-third-75-basis-point-hike). Given that, do you think it’s now essentially a prerequisite to bring employment down and unemployment up to get price inflation back down to 2%? Or do you think its reasonable to believe that price inflation can be sustainably brought back down to 2% without necessarily forcing unemployment up in tandem? Asked a different way, what is your view of the Phillips Curve in the post-pandemic economy?

9) You and your colleagues seem to use the demand for labor, perhaps best measured as the number of employed people plus job openings, as being a key indicator for aggregate demand in the economy. If labor productivity is down, however, then it seems quite possible that labor demand is higher to compensate for that, rather than as a measure of excess demand for goods and services themselves (which would presumably otherwise be measured by GDP). So in your view, why is labor demand the best indicator for aggregate demand in the economy, and if it isn’t, what do you think are better metrics besides that and the more traditional metric of GDP?

10) Following on with that, we’ve seen the country hire about 3M workers in 2022, and given new workers tend to be less productive than more experienced ones, how are you thinking about the potential lag period for productivity improvements, if any, for all of these newly employed people?

11) In light of the last two questions, and given the declines in prices in transportation markets and other logistics indexes, such as the New York Fed’s own Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/gscpi#/overview), what do you think is the current imbalance between supply and demand, and how worried are you that this imbalance will be further cleared up as these new workers settle into their new roles just as the Fed steps up its interest rate hikes?

12) 12-18 months is commonly thought to be the lag period for monetary policy, but given how vocal the Fed has been with its forward guidance this year, that lag period has almost certainly become shorter. Yet given many businesses have or acquire loans that are priced off bank rates that only move once the Fed changes policy, there clearly is still effects to be felt from additional hikes. So given that, what do you think the lag is in monetary policy today, and how do you think that you and your colleagues being so vocal publicly has altered that period?

13) Fed officials have publicly tried to convey the notion that the Fed would like to raise rates to some level of restrictive policy and hold them there for some time. Given how uncertain the “neutral” rate of interest is these days, how are you thinking about the risks of moving slower versus faster on rate hikes, especially given the lag in monetary policy, such that you don’t have to hike and then cut because you accidentally hiked too far?

14) Given the statistical tendency for housing and rent to lag in the government inflation statistics, how focused will you be on things like the Median CPI or Trimmed PCE going forward to help avoid the possibility that Fed policy stays tighter than it needs to for longer than it needs to because of things like this?