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fomc | 2,007 | President Poole. | 4 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What do we know about the likelihood of an auto strike, what might come out of it, and how long it might last? Second, Karen, my sense is that the financial markets in the United Kingdom are probably the most disrupted of any of the industrial economies. Perhaps you could comment a bit more on ... | 70 |
fomc | 2,007 | So thus far--unless something has happened while we have been sitting here that I don't know about and you do--I think things look reasonably encouraging on the labor front with the auto negotiations. We are not expecting a strike; in fact, we are expecting them to work through the final details. Obviously, the creatio... | 108 |
fomc | 2,007 | The situation in the United Kingdom is an unfolding drama that is just a soap opera in many respects. At the root there seem to be some severe differences of opinion of what the right response is to situations in the markets. In the beginning, there was virtually no explicit action by the Bank of England to counter hei... | 955 |
fomc | 2,007 | I see a two-handed intervention. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Yes. Just a question, really, for Bill and Brian. One thing that is positive about all of this--although maybe I'm wrong about it--is that the spillovers into the other markets outside the United Kingdom have been very, very minor. Normally, what's happening in the U.K. context would be an information shock that could ... | 112 |
fomc | 2,007 | Yes, I agree with that. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | It is really an important issue. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Three weeks ago, if this had happened, I think there would have been a different market reaction. The market reaction has been very mild. They seem to be able to sort it out as a specific problem pertaining to Northern Rock and the U.K. regulatory regime, not something that applies to a broader market. So I agree with ... | 68 |
fomc | 2,007 | But, I have to say--as when President Fisher asked that question about whether we know what we don't know, to which, of course, the answer is always "no"--[laughter] five days ago, I wouldn't have brought up Northern Rock. So, I can't promise you that there aren't-- | 62 |
fomc | 2,007 | Previously Newcastle, should have been called Sandcastle. [Laughter] | 14 |
fomc | 2,007 | The Spanish banks, for example, and the Spanish mortgage market are places, if I were going to dig deeper and look for hidden problems, that are a possibility. | 33 |
fomc | 2,007 | President Fisher. | 3 |
fomc | 2,007 | I won't ask a silly question like the one I asked before. I just have two quick questions, one for Dave, and the other for Karen. When we look at the labor situation, from an analytical standpoint, it seems to me that there is cognitive dissonance between that and what we are hearing anecdotally. What I'm hearing anecd... | 276 |
fomc | 2,007 | The way I square the corners is that, even by our estimates, the labor market is still tight. The 41/2 percent unemployment is still below the 43/4 that we are estimating the NAIRU to be. Even on our forecast of the labor market, the unemployment rate doesn't get to the NAIRU until the middle of next year. So it wouldn... | 171 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. | 3 |
fomc | 2,007 | I think there are some inflation risks out there. In general, Mexico, say, or Brazil--some of the countries that target inflation--are operating pretty near their target, maybe even a tiny bit above it. One of the pre-August but sort of persistent problems we have been facing for about six to nine months, maybe even fo... | 510 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | 10 |
fomc | 2,007 | Other questions? If not, we are ready for our economic go-round. For President Evans's benefit, we do have two-handed interventions as a possibility. It's like the discount window--rarely used but there if you need it. | 47 |
fomc | 2,007 | Is there a stigma, Mr. Chairman? [Laughter] | 13 |
fomc | 2,007 | There's no stigma. President Hoenig. | 8 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As far as where conditions are today, I'll keep my remarks short since they don't differ a great deal from the Greenbook, Part 2, and the remarks of others. On the District itself, our District continues to do economically well. Energy obviously is a strong factor. For agriculture, we have even... | 517 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Fisher. | 6 |
fomc | 2,007 | Well, Mr. Chairman, with regard to our District, we continue to grow apparently faster than the rest of the country. There are signs of overbuilding, particularly in the multiresidential and some commercial sector areas. I will give you one data point that focuses the mind, and then I'd like to go on to a broader discu... | 2,379 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. The news about the Italian strike is concerning me considerably. [Laughter] | 18 |
fomc | 2,007 | It didn't work. | 4 |
fomc | 2,007 | President Fisher, you raised a legitimate issue, which I think I should address now. We will this afternoon be discussing this auction credit facility with a possible swap that would allow the Europeans to provide term dollar funding as well. This work has been going on for a few weeks. It has been very intensive. The ... | 225 |
fomc | 2,007 | Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to that discussion. I didn't know that. If they are, indeed, tied together, then I would be making a very strong argument against a 50 basis point cut if it were tied at the same time to this facility. So thank you very much for that clarity. | 67 |
fomc | 2,007 | Sure. President Plosser. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On balance, the data and the anecdotal evidence in our District say that the economy continues to expand and advance moderately, but the pace may have slowed somewhat since June. Readings of our Business Outlook Survey of regional manufacturing have been very volatile this summer. You may recal... | 2,541 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Yellen. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Readings on core inflation during the intermeeting period have continued to be encouraging, and the downward trend has persisted long enough that I've lowered my inflation forecast slightly. With the weaker outlook for growth, I also see less upside inflation risk emanating from cyclical pressu... | 1,602 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Rosengren. | 8 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Most of the economic data we have for this meeting reflect the economy before the liquidity issues in August. The employment report, while probably not wholly reflective of the problems and affected by some anomalous seasonals, nonetheless provides evidence that labor markets were slowing at th... | 881 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Pianalto. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reports that I am hearing from my business contacts reflect a sudden and a significant deterioration in their evaluation of the business climate. The data in hand, except for the troubling August employment report, have not been especially dire, and neither are the impressions I get from th... | 713 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Lockhart. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the Sixth District, we indulge ourselves with the conceit that our District looks a lot like the nation as a whole. We have 45 million consumers and an industrial composition that does resemble the country, so you can process my regional remarks with that conceit in mind. Housing markets con... | 1,220 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Lacker. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Recent information from the Fifth District, both from contacts and from our survey responses, suggests that growth in economic activity in our District has slowed in recent weeks. The survey indicates that retail sales have weakened, with big-ticket categories such as automobiles and building m... | 1,050 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Evans. | 6 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To date, economic conditions in the Seventh District have changed little since our last meeting. We continue to expand at a modest rate, as reported in the Beige Book two weeks ago. Even after accounting for continuing declines in the housing sector, most of my contacts thought the national eco... | 1,038 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Let's put President Poole between us and the coffee break. President Poole. [Laughter] Sorry. | 25 |
fomc | 2,007 | After or before? | 4 |
fomc | 2,007 | Before. Go ahead. | 5 |
fomc | 2,007 | Oh, before. Okay. I'm going to be brief. | 12 |
fomc | 2,007 | It's a question of how desperate you are. [Laughter] | 13 |
fomc | 2,007 | Speak for yourself. I have just a few anecdotes here. My contact in the trucking industry says that things are very, very glum there. Volume is down 11 percent, year over year. Shipping rates are down 5 percent, and this is very general in the trucking industry. We get the same story from the trucking side of FedEx and... | 570 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Sorry to have put you on the spot there. It is 11:10. Why don't we take a break until 11:30? Thank you. | 35 |
fomc | 2,007 | President Stern. | 3 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me make a few comments about current economic conditions and then talk a bit about the outlook. By way of overview, I will say that I largely agree with the Greenbook, both about the current quarter and about the near-term outlook, in any event. The current quarter does look as though it is... | 700 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Vice Chairman Geithner. | 9 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my view, the balance of risks has changed significantly over the past several weeks. Although outside of housing we don't see much evidence nationally of a significant softening of growth, growth is likely to be somewhat softer than we had expected, and the downside risks to that lower path ... | 1,200 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Kohn. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The repricing of risk and rechanneling of credit flows under way I believe will exert restraint on spending, especially in the near term, but over the longer run as well. A critical channel of contagion that came into play in the intermeeting period was the involvement of the banks as providers... | 1,177 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Warsh. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As Governor Kohn just suggested, I think financial market tumult is likely to be of sufficient duration to have a meaningful effect on the real economy. The policies that we'll be considering later today are unlikely to be a panacea, but I think that is not a reason for us to avoid taking some ... | 2,136 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Kroszner. | 9 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you very much. Obviously, I agree with virtually everyone around the table that some of the downside risks have increased, and it's important to think about them in terms not just of the overall average but of tail risks. As Vice Chairman Geithner pointed out, one of the responsibilities we have overall is for th... | 2,497 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Mishkin. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Clearly, the key issue in thinking about where the economy is and what we need to do about policy is the financial destruction that is going on right now. When I look at it, I think about the different episodes that we've had in the post-World War II period and separate them into two sets of ep... | 935 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, and thank you all. Let me just briefly summarize and make a few additional comments. Financial market conditions were a key theme of our discussion today. Recent developments in financial markets have been reflected in reduced willingness to take risk and in tighter credit conditions. Bank balance sheets are... | 1,511 |
fomc | 2,007 | 3 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To guard against the contingency that our security procedures have broken down and the Committee's policy drafts are being monitored by unknown forces, the staff has taken countermeasures by circulating multiple drafts of table 1. [Laughter] Of the two drafts circulated this morning, I will b... | 2,335 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Are there any questions? If not, we'll have our policy go-round. Many people have already tipped their hands. We do have a 2:15 constraint, so I hope that people will keep that in mind. President Hoenig. | 51 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having been a part of this policy group for a while, the one thing I can tell you with certainty is that, no matter what we do today, it will be criticized, [laughter] and unlike us, our critics will be absolutely confident in their position. So having recognized that, I would feel comfortable ... | 336 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Plosser. | 8 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As many of you might imagine, I've struggled mightily with this particular decision. My outlook for the economy has changed sufficiently for me to support a cut in the fed funds rate at this meeting. My reasoning may be a little different from that of some of you; nonetheless it leads to the sa... | 1,466 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Rosengren. | 8 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there's a general consensus that we should ease. To me the question is not whether to ease but how much is appropriate. To ease by 25 basis points, I think, could be justified by slow housing and weakening labor markets in the absence of any financial turmoil. However, I'm concerned tha... | 214 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Mishkin. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | I've already said that I don't see that the risk is on the inflation front right now, although clearly we have to keep monitoring inflation, and that the serious risk is the nonlinear downward spiral that could occur. Of course, the big problem is really the issue of information revelation and price discovery. I want t... | 1,100 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. As you know, I'm an advocate of two-day meetings. This is exactly why. Michelle informs me that our true drop-dead time is 1:45. So we do need, please, to be efficient. Next is President Lockhart. | 53 |
fomc | 2,007 | Well, in my earlier remarks I stated my reasons for supporting 50 basis points, so I will play Calvin Coolidge here--that is, 50 basis points, alternative B. It's important that we neither signal further actions nor suggest that we're through and that we preserve some flexibility because of the uncertainty. So that's m... | 73 |
fomc | 2,007 | President Pianalto. | 4 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given the shift that I am projecting in economic outlook, I think that a more decisive action is called for today, and I support a 50 basis point cut in the fed funds target rate. In the past few meetings I was in favor of setting our fed funds target rate above neutral to secure progress for d... | 561 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you very much. President Lacker. | 9 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the actual signs of softness we've seen are significant enough to warrant a 25 basis point cut in the fed funds rate. I expect that the slowdown is going to be a little less severe than that in the Greenbook, and I'm concerned about the likelihood of inflation's remaining above my objec... | 437 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Evans. | 6 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given my outlook for growth and inflation and my assessment of the neutral federal funds rate, I can readily agree to 50 basis points in cuts on a cumulative basis. I came into this meeting having a slight preference for alternative C and doing 25 basis points today with an expectation of 25 at... | 465 |
fomc | 2,007 | President Evans joins the table with twelve years of experience already. [Laughter] | 16 |
fomc | 2,007 | Governor Kohn. | 4 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be glad if you don't tell how many years of experience I have around this table. [Laughter] I support the action and the language of alternative B for the reasons that have been given by many others around this table. I think that the odds favor a significant reduction in aggregate demand ... | 541 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Yellen. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I strongly support the Bluebook alternative B. I think a 50 basis point cut right away is appropriate, and I like the language. My reasons for supporting this action are, first, that inflation has been quite well behaved. I'm pretty sanguine about the future. Second, I think the available econo... | 697 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Poole. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I favor a cut of 50 basis points, and I think that the alternative B language does what we need it to do. It's very much in our interest that the markets settle down sooner rather than later. I also think that the moral hazard argument in this context is simply wrong. It's wrong because if you ... | 317 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Stern. | 6 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I favor meaningful action today, so that's a 50 basis point reduction in the fed funds rate target along the lines of alternative B. I think I pretty well laid out the reasons for that in my earlier comments. I think the financial disruptions do matter for the short-term path of the econo... | 359 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. President Fisher. | 6 |
fomc | 2,007 | Well, Mr. Chairman, I already presented my position. Like President Evans, I came into this room expecting to argue for a 25 basis point cut. Unlike President Evans, I'm still there. [Laughter] I just want to record, since I've already lost the battle, two points. I think Vice Chairman Geithner said it right. Governor ... | 467 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Warsh. | 7 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick point on moral hazard--I think there are fair concerns about it. The losses that have been felt in the markets in the past six weeks--that money is gone. It is not coming back. It is true that some of these institutions will find new ways, create new products, buy assets cheap, but... | 394 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Governor Kroszner. | 9 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I mentioned before, from a risk-management perspective I think it's very sensible to make a 50 basis point cut. We have an environment in which the economy has been growing modestly. Some of the numbers that we've seen recently--the lower numbers in the labor market in the revisions from the... | 706 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Vice Chairman. | 6 |
fomc | 2,007 | I support, Mr. Chairman, cutting the fed funds rate 50 basis points today and the language in alternative B, and I cede the rest of my time to you. | 36 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. The one person at the table who I know is going to be right is President Hoenig, who says that whatever we do is going to be criticized. I can write the Wall Street Journal editorial for tomorrow. [Laughter] I just want to say that I think that moral hazard is a terribly misund... | 660 |
fomc | 2,007 | I'll be reading the directive from page 35 of the Bluebook, and the assessment of risks from the table distributed today. "The Federal Open Market Committee seeks monetary and financial conditions that will foster price stability and promote sustainable growth in output. To further its long-run objectives, the Committe... | 182 |
fomc | 2,007 | Thank you very much. We can recess now for half an hour for lunch. The Board of Governors will vote, but the rest can recess for lunch. [Laughter] During lunch, our Congressional Liaison person, Laricke Blanchard, will give us an informal update on congressional matters. We will try to reconvene around 2:00. [Meeting r... | 78 |
fomc | 2,007 | Why don't we reconvene our meeting? Item 5 on the agenda is communication. We have a couple of things to do. Scott Alvarez and his colleagues have prepared a memo, which you received, on the issue of voting on the full statement. Could you give us a brief overview, Scott, and then I'd like, if possible, just to get a s... | 89 |
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