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President Bob McTeer—In
His Own Words
The American Way
 That
good-looking young fellow in the picture is me, standing
in front of my family home in June 1949. My only memory
of that house is returning from school one day and discovering
that it was missing. I had forgotten that it was to
be moved that day about a quarter-mile up the road.
Once it was relocated, my dad added a couple more rooms
to it. A few years later, when his income permitted,
he expanded the other side of the house.
Later, we bricked it and added
more rooms, plus a carport that I helped my dad build
by hauling dirt to it, one wheelbarrow load at a time.
It took all summer.
I think of that house and the
way it grew over time as a metaphor for income growth.
My dad's was no Horatio Alger story, but his income
probably rose from the lowest rung of the income distribution
to the highest during his working life and then back
down a notch or two.
| Excerpted from the
1995
Annual Report, "By Our Own
Bootstraps: Economic Opportunity and the
Dynamics of Income Distribution," Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas |
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 That's
not a picture of my grandfather...but it could have
been. My grandfather was a blacksmith, as was his father.
My dad, however, was part of the evolutionary process
of the churn. After quitting school in the seventh grade
to work for the sawmill, he got the entrepreneurial
itch. He rented a shed and opened a filling station
to service the cars that had put his dad out of business.
My father was successful, so he bought some land on
the top of a hill and built a "truck stop."
(The quotation marks are to distinguish his modest version
from the interstate behemoths we see today.) Our truck
stop was extremely successful until a new interstate
went through 20 miles to the west. The churn replaced
U.S. 411 with Interstate 75, and my visions of the good
life faded.
| Excerpted from the
1992
Annual Report, "The Churn:
The Paradox of Progress,"Federal Reserve
Bank of Dallas |
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Work
I remember when they called
them service stations. When I started out pumping gas
at my dad's station, I used to check the oil and wipe
the windshields whether they needed it or not. I didn't
know it at the time, but I was part of the service sector.
Even so, I could still tell people what I did and they
knew what I was talking about. Or, they could just look
at my fingernails.
It's more ambiguous these days.
I guess I'm still in the service sector. But when I
have to fill in the little blank that asks my occupation,
I hardly know what to write. Lately, I just put central
banker. In any case, newsprint has replaced car grease
on my hands.
| Excerpted from the
1994
Annual Report, "The Service
Sector: Give It Some Respect," Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas |
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 When
I was about 10 years old, I picked a little cotton on
Billy Joe Hopper's farm about three miles up the road
from my house in North Georgia. My ambition was to pick
100 pounds in a day. At three cents a pound, I would
earn three whole dollars. As I recall, the adults, who
knew what they were doing, could pick 300 pounds or
more in a day. They could make $10. The money doesn't
sound like much today, and I guess it really wasn't
much then either, but it sure gave me some good memories.
The best is the memory of total exhaustion, with my
back hurting so badly I could hardly stand up, as I
rode home at dusk on top of a load of cotton.
Monetary Policy
 My
dad’s name was Doyal, and I literally grew up in
Doyal’s Truck Stop—open 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, in rural Georgia. We ate our meals there.
Doyal worked days from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Little Doyal
(that’s me) worked 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.—except
Saturday night, when I started at midnight, if I had
a date, which, of course, I always did.
The hard part of the job was mopping
the floors every night and changing truck tires. The
miserable part of the job was trying to sleep in the
daytime in the summer without air conditioning. But
the scary part of the job was the fear my dad instilled
in me that I might accidentally put gasoline into a
diesel truck and diesel fuel into a gasoline truck.
Either way, you ruin the motor and you ruin your life.
My high school was too small to
have a football team, so basketball was our major sport
and I played on the varsity my junior and senior years.
My major fear there was that in
the confusion of play I would get turned around—especially
in a jump ball situation—and shoot a basket on
the wrong end of the court. I didn’t want to be
"Wrong Way McTeer."
So what do putting gasoline in
a diesel engine and shooting basketball on the wrong
end of the court have to do with the economy and monetary
policy?
I’ll tell you—I still
have a fear of zigging when I should be zagging. It
would be very bad to ease monetary policy just as inflation
was about to pick up. It would also be bad to tighten
monetary policy just as we’re about to sink into
a recession.
Fortunately, most of the time
the question is whether to zig or not to zig. When you
are contemplating a zig, a zag is usually not even a
consideration.
It’s the same with zags.
To zag or not to zag. Don’t even consider zigging.
But every now and then something
comes along to cloud the situation. Something that would
make the consequences of a wrong move more serious,
without clarifying what would [actually] be a wrong
move.
| Excerpted from a
speech to the Arlington (Texas) Chamber
of Commerce, June 4, 1998 |
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