Plunging Crude Prices: Introduction and Welcoming Remarks

Julie Stackhouse, senior vice president, Banking Supervision and Regulation at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, opens the February, 12, 2015 Dialogue with the Fed focusing on plunging oil prices and their impact on the economy.

• Part 1: Julie Stackhouse, Introduction and Welcoming Remarks (5:27)
• Part 2: Speaker Introduction and Overview (9:57)
• Part 3: Effects of Increased U.S. Oil Production (10:00)
• Part 4: Regional Effects of Lower Oil Prices (10:54)
• Part 5: How U.S. States Fare; Oil Price and Consumption Forecasts (11:12)
• Part 6: Audience Q&A (32:32)

Transcript:

Julie Stackhouse: Welcome to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. For those of you that I don't know, my name is Julie Stackhouse. I'm a Senior Vice President here at the Federal Reserve and have the privilege of being your host tonight on a topic that is not only timely, but one where, as you start to dig into it a little bit, I think you're, at least I was always amazed at what I didn't know. And I hope you'll be as intrigued as I was when I first had a chance to start talking and thinking about the topic.

In just a minute I'll introduce our presenter, but a few reminders for those of you that haven't been here before. There are restrooms that are just outside what will be your right hand side. If you do need to leave during the presentation, please walk to the back and on out. I'm sure our speaker will take questions during the presentation if you have something top of mind, but importantly at the end of the presentation we'll gather as a panel and you will have an opportunity to ask questions, not only about tonight's presentation but we will have one of our research economists from the St. Louis Fed. So if you get inclined to want to talk about something else, sort of Fed related or monetary related, I'm just going to call on him because I'm sure not going to take those questions. So, we'll be certain to allow time for that. And of course, you also do have microphones. For those of you that haven't used them, the little black thing with the black thing sticking out of it, that's your microphone and there's an on/off switch underneath it. So if you do ask a question please choose to turn that on.

I'm going to introduce our speaker tonight but first I have to tell you this was interesting with bringing our speaker. Initially what my intent was, was to bring our speaker to St. Louis to address our bank examiners. You can imagine that in the review of banking organizations across the United States, we have many banks that make loans, not just to the energy industry but to either retailers or other industries that are dependent on the energy industry. So we have a very strong need to educate our examiners and that's part of our responsibility at the St. Louis Fed—educate our bank examiners.

So Mine was recommended to me by my colleague at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and initially what I said is, could you come up and do this webinar program. It's on a Friday. It's just an hour. No big deal. We'll take care of everything. And she said okay. And she said she'd bring her colleague, Mike. And then I said well, since you're coming here anyway, would you mind doing this program on Thursday night? And she said okay. And I thought I am 2-for-2 so then I said, and since you'll be here overnight, would you mind on Friday morning, we have this bankers' breakfast we do periodically, would you mind doing that too. And she said yes again. So I really feel like I'm striking, well you get three hits here. This is a pretty good batting average.

I'm not sure what that says about you Mine, but it worked for me so I'm pretty happy. But we do have one other thing we need to do. We do need to do our virtual poll. For those that haven't been here the little thing that looks like a calculator. That is not a calculator. That's your polling tool. So if you would please read the list of what industry you either are employed in or if you're not employed, I know there's some very happy people in here who say yeah, I'm past that, then you can select eight or nine. But let's just see who we have here tonight. So we'll take a minute to get your answers. And if you don't see it in the upper right hand corner, that's where we do the count. It's sort of like okay, if we don't get as many answers on the next question as this one, I know someone's cheating.

Okay. I think we're getting close. It's starting to slow down a little bit. So let's go ahead and see what it says. Number eight. There are a lot of happy people here tonight. And then there's the rest of us. Health and education is well up there. Professional and business services, I have no idea what that is but that sounds good too. But certainly we've got a fair bit of diversity after all of you happy retirees. Let's go to our next question. Is this your first time inside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis? Okay. It looks like we're slowing down here again. 15% yes. 85% no. Why am I not surprised. I think this time I saw so many faces I remember and I knew that was going to be that way. But for the 15% of you that haven't been here before, welcome. We're thrilled that you can come in. It's really not as scary as it looks from the street. And yes, we do go through the security every single day and live to tell about it. No, we are thrilled to have you here and I think one of the things you'll find is that the St. Louis Fed is an amazing resource center, not just for things we do as part of our job; monetary policy, bank supervision, but the educational materials we produce for many in the general public. So this is one piece of that, and welcome.