The theme of this year's Jackson Hole central bank meeting is "Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy", which will talk about the strength of the US economy despite interest rate hikes of more than 5 percentage points and its defiance of many recession predictions. Monetary policy may have less impact on the real economy than in past interest rate cycles, both due to the legacy problems of low interest rates that prevailed from 2009 to 2022 and due to structural changes in the economy. Millions of homeowners still have 30-year mortgages with interest rates below 4%, and businesses are taking advantage of ultra-low interest rates to refinance and extend loans before interest rates rise. In fact, many of the largest U.S. companies are net interest earners. (Barron's)