The shocking appearance of activists at the usually quiet retreat is a sign of a growing battle over when and whether the Fed should raise interest rates. That crucial decision is making the central bank even more of a political target for populist anger. With critics like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul taking sharper swipes at the Fed, protesters are becoming emboldened.

Both liberal and conservative critics of the bank have organized "counter conferences" on monetary policy held at the same time and place -- the first time in more than 30 years that anyone has scheduled events competing with the symposium hosted annually by the Kansas City Fed.

“The economy has not fully recovered and interest rates should not be raised when racial disparities exist,” said Shawn Sebastian, a policy advocate for the Fed Up Coalition of the Center for Popular Democracy, pointing to continued higher-than-average unemployment rates for black Americans.

And the crowded juxtaposition of the bankers and activists in a small resort area makes for some awkward encounters.

Sebastian spotted Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker at the check-in desk at the Jackson Lodge this week and went right up to him.

“I gave him our agenda and invited him, personally, to come to our conference,” Sebastian said. “He handed the agenda back to me and said he had seen it and was, ‘well prepared for this kind of thing.'”

As Fed officials hear from central bankers from Switzerland and Chile Friday, they are doing so practically next door to a workshop called “Do Black Lives Matter to the Fed?” sponsored by Sebastian's group, which wants rates to stay low until wage growth and unemployment improve, especially for minorities. Meanwhile, a conservative group, the American Principle Project, is holding a separate conference several miles away that includes speakers pushing for tighter monetary policy and higher interest rates, as well a return to the gold standard.

The atmosphere is very different than when the Kansas City Fed started holding the retreat in Jackson Hole in 1982, back when fly-fishing enthusiast Paul Volcker was in charge of the central bank. The symposium has always been held in late August and billed as an exclusive, invitation-only affair in the middle of a national park. Over the years, it's grown to be one of the more high-profile Fed events, even being called the Davos for central banks.

The head of the Fed usually attends, although Chair Janet Yellen is skipping this year. The event tends to be covered by the media because, in past years, Fed chiefs like Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan have used the occasion to broadcast significant monetary-policy shifts.

The event is fairly cloaked in secrecy. Its dates weren't announced until early this spring.

“When I first started asking about it, back in November, they were very secretive. I had to go and ask the lodge what weekends were available and from that, I was able to determine the right weekend,” said Steve Lonegan, policy director for the American Principle Project, which was prohibited by lodge staff from holding a conference at the same place as the Fed symposium. His group is down the road at the Hotel Terra and Diamond Cross Ranch.

“I was told by the lodge staff that the Fed had the whole building, because of security purposes," he said.

A spokesman for the Kansas City Fed acknowledged this was the first year their symposium was taking place alongside competing monetary conferences. But he declined to comment further about the other groups.

Both organizations confirmed they’ve had opportunities over the past several months to sit down and talk about their top priorities face-to-face with Yellen.

But they said holding a conference at the same time as the Jackson Hole event seemed like the ideal way to get even more attention to their cause, with the added bonus that their own conference-goers might also run into central bank policymakers at the park. Both groups had invited Fed officials to their conference and hoped to get crossover attendees.

At one point this week, a group of about 100 Fed Up conference-goers outside the Jackson Hole Lodge chanted: “Don’t raise interest rates! Don’t raise interest rates!”

Meanwhile, central bankers flying into the Jackson Hole Airport -- basically the main entry to the area for conference-goers -- may have passed the American Principle Project's table advertising its event highlighting the problems of loose monetary policy.

“The goal of our conference is to challenge the Fed’s monetary policy and educate the American people on the widening income gap driven by the failed policies of the Federal Reserve system,” said Lonegan, whose conference includes speakers like Rep. Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, and the outspoken broker and Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff. Schiff’s session is called, “Monetary Roach Motel — No Exit from the Fed’s Stimulus.” There’s a panel on international monetary reform, which includes members of British Parliament, and a few speakers who want a return to the gold standard.

The APP had originally signed on former Fed chief Alan Greenspan as their main speaker. Greenspan pulled out, Lonegan said, so now former Sen. Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, is the keynote speaker.

“It’s not easy to put together a counter conference to the most powerful organization on the planet earth,” Lonegan said. “You have to have speakers who have the guts to put their names out there.”

Source: Politico