Monetary policy can be kind of boring, so we make up metaphors to make it sound more interesting. He's a hawk! And she's a dove! And ... what were we talking about again?
Oh, right. Monetary policy. See, the dominant metaphor when it comes to the Fed are "hawks" who care more (or is it only?) about inflation, and "doves" who don't. Now, it can be a quasi-useful way to think about things, if a bit reductive. Sometimes overly so. Take Fed Chair frontrunner Janet Yellen. She's usually described as a dove's dove, someone who thinks "unemployment" is more of a four-letter word than "inflation." That's certainly what markets think about her. Indeed, the news that Larry Summers would not be the next Fed Chair was enough to send global stock up about 1 percent on the hope that Janet Yellen would -- which lead to this rather awkward Financial Times headline.