Alumni Profile: Evan Ryser, Monetary Policy & International Finance Credential ’22

Evan Ryser, MPIF'22, is a reporter for MNI Market News who covers the Federal Reserve, trade, and monetary policy. "I pursued a career in journalism because it meshed with my outlook on life, which is to question your assumptions and follow reputable sources as much as possible.”

Ryser describes MNI Market News—a wire service that covers the central banks—as, "like Reuters. We cover the nitty gritty details of international monetary policy and the central banks.” When he took the job, his manager encouraged him to find a program that would enhance his understanding of the beat. A bit of searching led him to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Monetary Policy and International Finance (MPIF) credential program.

“I didn’t have a thorough, formal background in the field heading into this job,” Ryser said. “The MPIF credential seemed to cover a lot of the material I was looking to study. Plus, covering economic policy, a lot of my sources are UChicago grads.”

Ryser credits the three-week program with providing a solid foundation in the history and inner-workings of the Federal Reserve at a time in which the Fed’s efforts to address inflation became a fixture in mainstream news.

“When I write about these issues, I try to communicate uncertainty while also providing as much context as possible to help readers make sense of the marketplace. For example, recently there have been a lot of questions about inflation in the US, and I appreciated that the MPIF looked at the history of monetary policy and assessed year-by-year what the Fed did: what it got wrong, what it got right, and the justifications for the decisions it made. We also dove into the theory of monetary policy that emerged in the 1960s and 70s, which of course prominently featured the work of economist and UChicago Professor, Milton Friedman."

Ryser continued, “Many make comparisons between the present state of inflation and the 'stagflation' of the 1970s, and the MPIF program really helped me understand key differences—namely, the inflation of the 70s was much more demand-driven, whereas recently it's pretty clearly supply-driven with a mix of demand. However," he added, "the similarity between these time periods is that you never know what the economy is going to do. Consider interest rates.

The market thinks this, the Fed thinks that—but nobody really knows."

When he writes about these issues, Ryser said, he tries to communicate that uncertainty while also providing as much context as possible to help readers make sense of the marketplace.

“It’s funny: a lot of what Fed watchers do—on Wall Street or wherever—is analyze everything through metaphor and comparison to other time periods. Although it’s a simple way to try to understand things, these comparisons never work out cleanly because the reality is nobody knows what’s going to happen with the Fed, with market structure, with interest rates, deglobalization, geopolitics, and so on. As a reporter, these challenges are always in the back of my mind. However, the context and insight I gained from MPIF has made me more confident when writing about these issues, and that, in turn, benefits our readership."