Tim Duy reports that r-star, which rose to prominence over the past few years, is experiencing a Caesar-like betrayal at the Fed:
The Federal Reserve’s “r-star” has gone full supernova. New York Federal Reserve President John Williams, its key proponent, made clear in a speech late Friday that the neutral interest rate is no longer a guiding star for monetary policy. This means a federal funds rate in the range of what is considered neutral has no special significance as far as policy is concerned...
Williams’s attachment to r-star cannot be overstated. At a professional level, it has been a key element of his research agenda. As recently as May he said that for “the moment, r-star continues to shine brightly, guiding monetary policy, but hold steady, low on the horizon.” The moment quickly passed. Last week, he tossed aside the metric, saying that it has “gotten too much attention in commentary about Fed policy.” A remarkable shift after just two 25-basis-point rate increases since his May comments...
Williams’ speech marks the end of a transition in policy away from explicit forward guidance. It began this past August with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech in which he noted the uncertainty surrounding estimates of key variables like the neutral interest rate. Fed Governor Lael Brainard pushed this point further in a subsequent speech, adding further uncertainty by differentiating between short- and long-run neutral. It continued in the September Federal Open Market Committee statement with the removal the description of policy as “accommodative.” And it ends with the primary proponent of the r-star concept — Williams — throwing it into the trash bin of crisis-era policy artifacts.
One is tempted to say "It was good knowing you r-star". However, r-star will still be around in all the models used by the FOMC and Fed staff. Just look at, for example, the policy rules on the Board of Governor's website or in its annual report. The reported change, as I see it, is more a move toward less explicit reliance on it. Implicitly, r-star will still be important to an FOMC that relies on the Phillips curve thinking in making its decisions.
Still, these developments do indicate there is some movement towards looking at other indicators as I noted in recent post. There I suggested one useful metric the FOMC could add to its lists of monetary policy indicators is the gap between a stable benchmark growth path for nominal GDP and its actual value. I outlined in this note several ways to create this metric and note that it is in the spirit of a NGDP level target without actually adopting one.
There are many reasons for the Fed to start following the NGDP gap. The most practical one is its ability to help the FOMC avoid falling for the inflation head fakes created by supply shocks. Here is hoping that out of the ashes of r-star's apparent demise arises an increased desire by the FOMC to pay attention to the NGDP gap.