Janet Yellen’s August 22, 2014 speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Symposium held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming was a verbal shell game with an invisible pea.
The first paragraph in Yellen’s speech began with this sentence: “In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.”Then, the first paragraph ended with the admission that “…five years after the end of the recession, the labor market has yet to fully recover.”
Many of the remaining 3,450 words she spoke refuted the claim of “considerable progress” and turned over multiple shells in search of the pea that explains why the labor market has not “fully” recovered.
The pea remains invisible.
In her penultimate paragraph, Yellen stated that, although labor market conditions have “improved more rapidly [rapid after five years?] than the Committee [Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC] had anticipated,” “Of course, if economic performance turns out to be disappointing and progress toward our goals proceeds more slowly than we expect, the future path of interest rates likely would be more accommodative [read “lower”] than we currently anticipate.”
Throughout her speech, Yellen used “if,” “might,” “may,” and “could” a total of 58 times. (The saying, “If my aunt had a moustache, she’d be my uncle” is only disputed by those with aunts who have moustaches.)





















