Internet caucus taking a look at internet privacy and personal data protection. The chair of the Federal Reserve, janet yellen, testified on the u. S. Economy and Monetary Policy appearing before the House Financial Services committee on wednesday for about three hours. The committee will come to order. Without objection the chair is authorized to suggest a recess for the committee at any time. This is the annual testimony on the Federal Reserves supervision and regulation of the Financial System. I now recognize myself for three minutes to give an opening statement. The dodd frank act requires the Federal Reserves vice chair of supervision to testify before our Committee Twice a year regarding the supervision and regulation of Financial Institutions. Regrettably, five years after the passage of dodd frank, no such person exists. President obama has been unwilling or unable to follow the law in a point at vice chair. We can no longer wait for the president to do his job so we can be al
If its my friends at the fcc, first of all, i wouldnt be shocked. And second of all, maybe thats a pretty fair thing. Have you done what you need to do to get this regulation, required by law, simply to allow us to know the incentive that is are involved and to prohibit inappropriate incentives that did help lead to the 2008 debacle. Have you done your job . We have tried to work constructively with the other agencies. I love when chairs never give answers. We have done i think the fed has done a pretty good job. Im not complain 00 the fed. But this is long overdue. Each regulator that comes before me, im going to ask. I dont say do a specific item, i dont care how much they make. Do it so the american person doesnt get on the hook again. On an item that we have already identified as a problem that everybody agrees was a problem and that should be relatively easy to fix. I agree with your assessment, that it was an important problem, that it is essential to address it. And as i said, i
We are very, very happy to have congressman teeberry take over as vice chair. Welcome. I also want to welcome our distinguished chair of the Federal Reserve janet yellen and thank her for appearing before us this morning. This committee has a long tradition of receiving regular updates from the chair of the Federal Reserve and were pleased to be continuing that tradition today. U. S. Economy has struggled through a long season of at tted growth. Over that time, our economy has grown at a historically slow pace averaging 2. 2 per year. Some had suggested that a 2 growth rate is and will be the new normal for the economy. All of us should view these low Economic Expectations as unacceptable. The fed certainly has an Important Role to play in setting Monetary Policy. And that is where its focus should be. There will no doubt be discussion of fed policy and Interest Rates during todays hearing as Monetary Policy by the fed has been the norm for some time now. We should also be mindful that
Were interested in having the chairman address that issue also. These are some of the major issues we will discuss, and i certainly look forward to hearing chair yellens thoughts on this. There is also growing uncertainty that we should add to the occasion. Too many mornings we hear breaking news or pick up the newspaper and find headlines we dont want to read. That appears to be a spreading cancer not only in the United States but also throughout the world. And so the uncertainty that that levels and the impact that it has on economic policies is perhaps another issue that we ought to be discussing. This morning, unfortunately, the house of representatives has a series of votes coming up shortly, so there may be some in and out of members having to deal with that as were trying to wrap up our session. Im going to try i will ask our members to try to keep their remarks and questions to five minutes. If we need a second round, we will try to accommodate that and also try to accommodate
Of your policy making and the effectiveness on your policy may be really regarding some structural changes that may be occurring in the result of the fact the result of the majority has been stagnant. And it seems to be a disconnect from some of the policy or the theory i remember learning years ago in economics that normally when you have increases in productivity, that productivity translates into higher wage levels. We have not seen that in recent years. We have seen productivity has gone up significantly more than wage levels. And if youre looking at formulating Monetary Policy, youre looking at aggregate demand and how you get that demand is income in the economy and wages. You mention that consumers are 80plus percent of it. So the more money consumers have, the stronger the economy is. And yet if it is not growing from wages, then it has to grow from them taking on debt. And yet if we look at the fact that wages have been stagnant, were seeing consumers are starting to deleverag