It seemed like a good idea at the time.

When Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell rolled out a new modus operandi for running monetary policy at the elite Jackson Hole economic symposium a year ago, the economy was just coming out of a pandemic-driven nosedive. That was after a decade of disappointingly slow growth, with inflation stubbornly below target.

Powell and his colleagues opted for a radical new strategic framework that Morgan Stanley economist Ellen Zentner says is now embedded in the Fed’s DNA: Use super-loose monetary policy to try to push unemployment down to levels previously thought unsustainable, and commit to letting inflation overshoot their 2% goal by a bit, for a while.

As policymakers prepare for another Jackson Hole conference, the economic picture looks much different. Thanks in no small part to a $1.9 trillion, front-loaded budget boost from President Joe Biden that caught Fed officials flat-footed, the economy has roared ahead,...

 In a statement, Ben Polak, a former Yale provost and chair of the search committee said: “The committee left no stone unturned in the search. In the end, the right answer was immediately before us. Matt Mendelsohn has the respect of his colleagues, of managers, and of his peer CIOs—and an extraordinary record of investing, building and leading teams, and representing what is best about Yale.” Mendelsohn graduated from Yale in 2007.

It is unusual for a top endowment to select a young, internal manager as chief investment officer. Big universities normally look outside their organizations for new endowment chiefs.

 But Yale’s investment office, built by Swensen over roughly 36 years, is arguably the best in the endowment world and has spawned endowment chiefs at several leading universities, including Princeton and Stanford.

Yale selected Swensen as its endowment chief in the mid-1980s, when he was little known and in his early 30s.

He...

Wall Street is diving back into the business of turning home loans into bonds, injecting new competition into a market long dominated by government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac .

The so-called private-label mortgage market—in which financial firms serve the middleman role of creating giant pools of loans and selling them to investors—had more than $42 billion of issuance in the second quarter. That is the most since the pandemic started and almost the most for any quarter since the last financial crisis, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry research firm.

This market still made up a mere 4% of all mortgage bonds issued last quarter. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which issue bonds that come with a federal guarantee that investors will get paid, remain the industry’s dominant players.

But mortgage investors expect the private market to keep growing as a repository of loans that Fannie and Freddie can’t or won’t...

Whether you’re hoping for an in-person holiday or gearing up for a second year of virtual services, this year’s Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come with unique challenges — and opportunities. Although the COVID-19 Delta variant means some synagogues’ plans are still up in the air, it’s not too early to start thinking about how to make this year’s High Holidays as meaningful as possible.

Here are some tips to get you started.

The shift of work and school online highlighted the lack of access to high-speed broadband internet service in some parts of the U.S. and intensified political pressure on the government to make it more widely available.  The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August 2021 includes $65 billion to finance expansion of broadband.

Here’s a primer on the problem and potential solutions.

SOUTH THOMASTON, Maine — It’s not yet 5 a.m., and the landing at the Spruce Head Fishermen’s Co-op is shrouded in predawn fog that obscures the waters beyond. It’s time to go to work, and Virginia Oliver and her son Max approach the dock in the dark in a 30-foot lobster boat.

They tie up under the stark, mist-speckled glare from an overhead light. Bait is brought aboard, equipment adjusted, and Max peers into the gloom as he eases the boat into Penobscot Bay.

In the world of Maine lobstering, it’s a scene that is repeated countless times up and down the state’s rugged coast. But here’s the difference: No other boat has a 101-year-old lobsterwoman aboard, and a fully working one at that.

In 2012, the Federal Reserve formally adopted an inflation target and set it at 2 percent, in line with the level chosen by many other central banks. In hindsight, this setting left policymakers with too little room to cut interest rates when they want to fight recessions. Many researchers have noted that if central banks raised their inflation targets—either individually or in concert—they could do a better job in the long run of keeping inflation near its target and the workforce fully employed. Reifschneider and Wilcox highlight an additional and less-noted consequence of raising the inflation target modestly: The economy could enjoy a temporary but substantial boom in employment and output as it adjusted to the increase in the target. Critical to generating this favorable outcome would be decisive action by monetary policymakers to ensure that the higher inflation target is achieved in a reasonably timely manner. In light of substantial transition benefits, as well as the...

The COVID crisis has led to a collapse in international travel. According to the World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals declined globally by 73 percent in 2020, with 1 billion fewer travelers compared to 2019, putting in jeopardy between 100 and 120 million direct tourism jobs. This has led to massive losses in international revenues for tourism-dependent economies: specifically, a collapse in exports of travel services (money spent by nonresident visitors in a country) and a decline in exports of transport services (such as airline revenues from tickets sold to nonresidents).

This “travel shock” is continuing in 2021, as restrictions to international travel persist—tourist arrivals for January-May 2021 are down a further 65 percent from the same period in 2020, and there is substantial uncertainty on the nature and timing of a tourism recovery.

We study the economic impact of the international travel shock during 2020,...

Federal Reserve officials are nearing agreement to begin scaling back their easy money policies in about three months if the economic recovery continues, with some pushing to end their asset-purchase program by the middle of next year.

In recent interviews and public statements, several have advocated for this timetable, which would enable them to raise interest rates sooner than currently anticipated if the economy makes rapid progress toward their goals.

The central bank last December said it would continue the current pace of bond purchases until officials concluded they had achieved “substantial further progress” toward their goals of 2% average inflation and robust employment.

Officials at their July 27-28 meeting deliberated on two important questions: when to start paring their monthly purchases of $80 billion in Treasury securities and $40 billion in mortgage securities, and how quickly to reduce, or taper, them. The Fed is set to release on...

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KABUL—Taliban fighters on Sunday entered Kabul, freeing inmates at the city’s main prison and triggering a massive effort to airlift Western diplomats and civilians as the country’s demoralized security forces offered no resistance.

The Taliban in a statement said that they wouldn’t take Kabul by force. The insurgent group added that it had ordered its fighters to wait and not penetrate the Afghan capital, home to six million people, and that it was in talks with “the other side” to discuss entering the city without harming its residents.

Until the transition of power is done, the current Afghan government would remain responsible for the security of the capital, it said, while adding that a general amnesty was announced for all government officials and soldiers.

A senior Afghan official said President Ashraf Ghani was at the U.S. Embassy to consult with the U.S. envoy. Both the U.S. and Afghan government have asked the Taliban to hold off for two...

Andrew M. Cuomo always cared about his place in history.

And so, early in his governorship, he invited Robert Caro, the Pulitzer-prize winning biographer and historian of power, for a private audience in Albany. The pitch had been for Mr. Caro to share lessons from the legacy of Robert Moses, the master builder who ruthlessly rolled over his opponents to remake New York in the past century.

But over cookies at the Capitol, it quickly became clear that Mr. Cuomo would be doing most of the talking. For close to two hours, he spoke admiringly about Mr. Moses, outlined his own governing philosophy and regaled Mr. Caro with his ambitions to build big — overhauling bridges, airports and more. Then, the governor politely declared the meeting over.

“It was an arrogant and angering thing to do,” Mr. Caro, now 85, recalled in an interview. “To think I had given a day of my life to have him lecture me.”

Imposing his will on others to accommodate his agenda and...

During the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, media reports detailed what appeared to be a sweeping migration out of U.S. urban centers. A theory developed that the pandemic had perhaps changed Americans’ view on city living and that, post-pandemic, this exodus from cities could be permanent. It was little surprise when apartment real-estate investment trusts (REITs) and other assets tied to urban living came under pressure.

The COVID crisis has led to a collapse in international travel. According to the World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals declined globally by 73 percent in 2020, with 1 billion fewer travelers compared to 2019, putting in jeopardy between 100 and 120 million direct tourism jobs. This has led to massive losses in international revenues for tourism-dependent economies: specifically, a collapse in exports of travel services (money spent by nonresident visitors in a country) and a decline in exports of transport services (such as airline revenues from tickets sold to nonresidents).

This “travel shock” is continuing in 2021, as restrictions to international travel persist—tourist arrivals for January-May 2021 are down a further 65 percent from the same period in 2020, and there is substantial uncertainty on the nature and timing of a tourism recovery.

We study the economic impact of the international travel shock during 2020,...