Fed Speech Canceled After Porn Zoom Bomb

A virtual speech by Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was canceled on Thursday after a participant “highjacked” the Zoom call by showing pornography on his screen.

Waller was scheduled to deliver remarks on the economic outlook to the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America. The speech was highly anticipated because Fed watchers wanted to know how Waller, usually regarded a “dove” on interest rates, was reacting to the spate of data in the last few weeks showing the economy and inflation heating up.

Moments before Waller was to speak, one of the participants in the Zoom call started playing pornography that was visible to the other participants. The call was quickly terminated.

“We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret,” said Brent Tjarks, executive director of the banking group. “We have had various programs and this is something that we have never had happen to us.”

Waller’s prepared remarks were released on the Fed’s website.  Waller sounded considerably more worried about inflation.

“Last month we received a barrage of data that has challenged my view in January that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) was making significant progress in moderating economic activity and reducing inflation. I’m not the only one whose outlook has shifted,” Waller said.

Reuters reported that there were more than 220 people logged in to the call before it was disrupted by the display of pornography, a behavior known as zoom bombing.