There was a time when Fed presidents didn’t give that many speeches, and people didn’t pay much attention to them. Before the ’90s, the entire Federal Reserve itself was much less transparent. “They were less transparent for a reason, because they thought being more mysterious would allow them to have more short run control over the economy,” said Gary Richardson, professor of economics at UC Irvine and former official historian of the Federal Reserve system. “Like if people don’t know what you’re doing and thinking, then when you do something, you surprise them and then the financial markets shift.”

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