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28 March 2024

Economics-heavy Valentine odes to the Fed

Published
By AFP

If there were any doubt, the US central bank now knows it has a pack of geeky groupies: ahead of the holiday of love on Friday, hundreds tweeted economics-heavy Valentine odes to the central bank.

Economist Justin Wolfers started the meme, with "You're my gold standard."

He continued with a reference to the Fed's ultra-low interest rate: "When you talk like that, all I want to do is get up against your zero bound."

That set off what can only be called a love-fest of hundreds and hundreds of monetary policy valentines.

"I'd like to borrow you overnight and then hold you to maturity," tweeted Alan Beattie of the Financial Times.

"Your balance sheet or mine?" offered Reuters' Jennifer Ablan.

"I'll be your lover of last resort," came from the finance geeks at NPR radio's Planet Money show.

There were references to strong bonds, irrational exuberance, and rising interest, all standard tropes of Fed-talk that are cryptic for the layman or woman.

Not a few were as close as economists can get to steamy, with talk of "stimulus" and "spreads", but some were touching:

"Please accept this note as tender," Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne offered.

After hundreds of love notes spotted the Twitter-verse, the Fed responded in kind.

The San Francisco Fed branch chimed in: "My love is elastic, my commitment too big to fail."

The Atlanta Fed was more direct: "Being with you hikes my pulse by several basis points."