The Bank of England's Megan Greene on Monetary Policy in a World of Supply Shocks

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:18)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:22)
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:23)
Joe, you know one nice thing about getting old?

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:28)
Go on.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:29)
I've been thinking about this a lot, actually. The nice thing about getting old is that a lot of people that you have known for a very long time, and that you've sort of grown up with, let's say over the years, start to get into really interesting positions, and sometimes senior positions, sometimes positions of power.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:49)
I love this take, right? Yeah. There are certain people that you don't get to know, or you're in your 20s or whatever, your peers, and that's great, but they probably aren't, for example, external members of the Bank of England, Monetary Policy Committee and so forth, or other such roles. But as you get senior, you're like, oh wow, I know that person. I recognize that name. As you guys like to say, who went to university in London, I went to uni with that person. My impression is that everyone in London quote, went to uni with literally everyone else, because I've heard you and Sid say that specific phrase so many times over the last decade.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:26)
No, not that often, surely. But you're absolutely right. You've sort of given the guest away. We're going to be speaking with someone that we've known for a long time. I think a lot of people have known her for a long time from her very public role on finance Twitter, as they say, and also in various columns in different media organizations.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:46)
And professional roles in this series of jobs, yeah.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:49)
To me, she will always be a member of Finance Twitter. But yes, various professional roles. And now she is, in fact, an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:59)
And it's a really interesting time, of course, to be talking about monetary policy. I mean, I would say it's an interesting time. I'd tell her it's an interesting time to be talking about monetary policy. But I would say it's a particularly interesting time because I could list several reasons for that. So obviously, we are still in the wake of the incredible inflation wave that we had post COVID. And at least in much of the world, inflation has not returned to target, in fact, in some countries. The rate hike cycle has begun. So there's still the live issue.
There is the shifting political situation in many countries in which the very premise of like, how much independence should the Central Bank have to operate is being re-discussed.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:41)
And it is in fact local elections in the UK right now.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:44)
That's right. We're speaking during a week of local elections. And then of course COVID shocked, maybe transitory, a one-off thing. Governor Christopher Waller in the US., he had a good speech recently called one transitory shock after another. Of course, in this case, alluding to the war in Iran. And so what does the price in oil and so forth mean for inflation? There are so many interesting questions right now for anyone in the seat of a monetary policymaker.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:10)
So much. And also the interaction between monetary policy and the bond market as well, right? So we're recording this, I feel I have to say this for every episode now, on May 6
Yesterday, we saw the 30-year UK guilt yield hit its highest since 1998 And that was after the BOE decision from last week to actually hold interest rates. So there's a tension there. Anyway, we have so much to talk about. Truly the perfect guest. We are, of course, going to be speaking with Megan Greene. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Megan.

**Megan Greene** (3:39)
Thank you for having me. It's great to see you guys again.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:41)
It's very, very fun, very nostalgic. What's it like to go from, I guess, thinking and writing and tweeting about economics to actually practicing economics, setting economic policy?

**Megan Greene** (3:54)
Yeah. So first of all, I love that you guys think of me as Finance Twitter.
I certainly was not paying any of my bills over the years. Now, sadly, my Twitter account is relegated mostly to baseball commentary.

**Joe Weisenthal** (4:07)
Understand.

**Megan Greene** (4:07)
Go Red Sox. But it's very different to go from analyzing and forecasting what central bankers will do to being a central banker and making the sausage myself. So it's a very different position with a whole lot more responsibility.