john c williams : there and back again remarks by mr john c williams, president and chief executive officer of the federal reserve bank of new york, at the long island association regional economic briefing, garden city, new york city, 28 february 2024. * * * as prepared for delivery introduction good afternoon, everyone. thank you for having me here today. i always enjoy meeting with business and community leaders in the federal reserve's second district. and it's a real treat to join you here at the cradle of aviation museum. it's a great reminder of long island's rich history in aeronautics and innovation. if only i had time to visit some of the space exhibits today. alas, maybe next time.... instead, in my remarks, i will focus on how the federal reserve is working to achieve our goals of maximum employment and price stability. i'll also discuss the significant progress we've seen in restoring balance to the economy and bringing inflation down to the federal open market committee's ( fomc's ) 2 percent longer - run goal. and i'll talk about what we still need to see for a full and sustained return to price stability. finally, i'll give my economic outlook. before i get into all of that, i need to provide the standard fed disclaimer that the views i express today are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the fomc or others in the federal reserve system. falling inflation, low unemployment in thinking about the state of our economy today, and what that means for the future, it's important to start from where we've been. as business leaders, you know all too well the impacts of the pandemic. in many ways, long island's economy mirrors new york city's. both were hit especially hard in 2020in fact, much harder than what we saw nationally. and in 2023, both reached an important milestone, returning to the number of jobs we had before the pandemic. last year was also a turning point for the u. s. economy. global supply chains, which were severely disrupted during the pandemic and early in the recovery, returned to normal. 1 demand came into better balance with supply. and the economy grew far faster than anyone expected a year ago, boosted by increases in the labor force and productivity. at the same time, the labor market remained strong, with the unemployment rate under 4 percent - a

’ s simply not enough to understand tone at the top in the u. s., if the top is really somewhere else. three things that supervisors can do • first, improve communication with firms. the counterpart to asking you to improve your communications with us is raising the expectation that we do the same. we need to be timelier in our communication of relevant findings in our supervisory efforts, and we need to shorten the time between the conclusion of supervisory work and our feedback to firms. more timely communication should also include sharing information in the earlier stages of our work, before all issues have been confirmed or facts sorted out, but at the point at which we suspect there ’ s something not quite right. this is important not just in the context of formal supervisory efforts like examinations, where we may have an early read on an issue, but also in areas where we see something or something has been flagged through other means and we raise it with you for discussion and attention as needed. our communication needs to be more candid and direct. too often i hear that our communication has too much “ nuance ” and that firms struggle to understand exactly what we are looking for. to be clearer in our communication, though, we also need to better understand the businesses you are in and how your businesses operate. as i indicated earlier, we need more context to understand your operations – and your sharing more global information with us does provide that necessary context. • second, improve collaboration and communications with other supervisors – both u. s. and foreign. for true consolidated supervision to work, information has to flow bis central bankers ’ speeches freely among supervisors. we need to eliminate the legal impediments for supervisors on the ground to be able to share information in a more routine and natural way. there are many efforts underway, through such venues as the fsb and the senior supervisors group, to promote enhanced information sharing and collaboration among supervisors. we also need to work more collaboratively together. this means sharing concerns about issues and agreeing on work necessary across the global firm to address the issues. this means jointly conducting examinations, as well as concurrently conducting work with similar scopes so that the full picture of the firm can be drawn, and we can capture all the relevant insights of these globally managed businesses. finally, it also means leveraging the results of work from other supervisors and not undertaking duplicative work. • third, enhance supervisory colleges, which were designed to improve the exchange of information among supervisors with the