Economics
The New York Fed Has a Black Swan Hunter
- Job of McConnell’s little-known unit is to query everything
- She sees danger in booms that leave policy makers complacent
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York headquarters.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
Margaret McConnell often tells Federal Reserve officials that they should be a lot more confused than they let on. That’s her job.
She’s head of the Applied Critical Thinking unit, a little-known enclave of the New York Fed with a big mandate: to poke holes in the most basic assumptions that central bankers make -- which can lead to big policy mistakes when they’re wrong.