I just read through opening remarks by Governor Michelle W, Bowman, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, delivered today during a Fed Listens event in Chicago. Fed Listens is an initiative through which policy makers engage community stakeholders in order to determine how monetary policy is impacting the lives of people in a community.
Today, the focus of Fed Listens appears to be on the American economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Governor Bowman’s focus during her remarks was on childcare, employment, and working parent issues in the Seventh District which encompasses the city of Chicago. She shared that engaging stakeholders on the ground in the Seventh District helped to provide color and context to the economic data that the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago gathers.
Here in Atlanta, we sit in the Sixth District. In my little corner of Atlanta, the neighborhood of West End, one of the best ways to get insights into how the community is doing is to listen to comments on food prices. For its part, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta produces a plethora of data regarding the region it regulates and supervises. Nothing beats keeping your ear to the ground and nothing is more informative than firsthand commentary on the price level for food.
I had that experience today as I decided to purchase some rice from a grocer located here in the West End. Looking at the price, I determined that between the time my son graduated high school in May 2020 and graduated college in May 2024, the price of this brand and portion of rice had increased 40%. Yes, 40%.
Each time I shop in that store, I hear the commentary. Ironically, this is a smaller sized grocer compared to a larger franchise grocer a mile away. But the commentary regarding the high prices is still the same for both grocers.
The thing is, in the West End, consumers have observed these higher prices longer than it took the Fed and the political class to notice. Just like the delay in noticing that President Joe Biden has not been firing on all cognitive cylinders, mainstream financial media has turned a blind eye to what is happening price wise on the ground to consumers. Likely a result of these consumers’ inability to bring assets to a prime broker and borrow money. The delay in curating consumption data from low-income consumers could be reduced if the Fed at least kept an actual ear in the community.
Alton Drew
10 July 2024
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Lawyers Write the Bets. Bankers Sell the Bets. 