Donald Kohn

[upbeat music] Each month, I speak with investors, policymakers, and academics about the most pressing market-moving issues for our top of my report from Goldman Sachs Research.

For our latest edition, I spoke with former Fed governors Donald Kohn and Stephen Miran, as well as Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs's chief economist and head of Goldman Sachs Research.

I started by asking Jan if the shift toward a less transparent Fed is a positive or negative development.

I do think that the transparency revolution in central banking over the last 40 years or so has been a good thing.

Then you have to take notes and whatever.

And so, like, ended up it would be the New York Fed president, Chair Bernanke, Kevin Warsh, and Don Kohn were the four people in the room, and, and that was the right call given the situation.

So anyway, th-this is part of the reason I worry about the discretion because, uh, the ethic of the committee i-in, in the norm of the committee in the Fed system is you don't contradict the chair.

You might dissent-

You can take two different kinds of hikes on the trails around Jackson.

I can sum up my hikes with former Vice Chairman Don Kohn with two words, I survived.

These steely marathon death marches revealed a side of Don that, that I was not ready for.

But there's another kind of hike.

We're gonna go-- Do we got live right now? We're gonna go right now to the, uh, chairman of the Federal Reserve, his annual address.

On the trails around Jackson, I can sum up my hikes with former Vice Chairman Don Kohn with two words: I survived.

These steely marathon death marches revealed a sign of Don that, that I was not ready for.

But there's another kind of hike.

... almost, right? And that was precisely what Milton Friedman objected to, that, you know, this forcing banks to make free loans to the government isn't a desirable thing to do.

And that's why the Fed, including Don Kohn, who's been a visitor here, I think will be a v- again, was a very strong advocate of paying interest on required reserves.

Yep.

But then when the crisis came, they actually used the tool to pay interest on excess reserves as a way to conduct monetary policy.