Source stringclasses 1
value | Date int64 1.98k 2.01k | Text stringlengths 2 27.1k | Token_count int64 1 5.57k |
|---|---|---|---|
fomc | 1,994 | First Vice President Conrad. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | We would support the recommendation, Mr. Chairman. | 10 |
fomc | 1,994 | President Melzer. | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | I just had a comment on the language; I don't know if this is the right time to make it. Have you gotten everybody's view? I shouldn't come back in unless you've gotten everyone. | 39 |
fomc | 1,994 | Yes, I think so. | 6 |
fomc | 1,994 | I think the "at least for a time" does it in terms of the flexibility, Alan. If I heard it right, you said "consistent at least for a time with the Committee's goals of"--what was that--noninflationary? | 51 |
fomc | 1,994 | "Noninflationary growth." | 7 |
fomc | 1,994 | "Noninflationary growth?" | 7 |
fomc | 1,994 | "Sustained noninflationary growth." | 9 |
fomc | 1,994 | The only question I have is whether it is possible that somebody could then conclude that the roughly 3 percent inflation we are seeing now is consistent in the mind of the Committee with zero inflation? | 38 |
fomc | 1,994 | I would think not. Noninflationary to me means noninflationary; 3 percent is not noninflationary. | 27 |
fomc | 1,994 | Okay. | 2 |
fomc | 1,994 | We are talking about objectives, we are not talking-- | 11 |
fomc | 1,994 | I understand. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | Okay, read the directive. | 6 |
fomc | 1,994 | With the discount rate phrase? | 6 |
fomc | 1,994 | Yes. | 2 |
fomc | 1,994 | I'm reading from page 14 in the Bluebook: "In the implementation of policy for the immediate future, the Committee seeks to increase somewhat the existing degree of pressure on reserve positions, taking account of a possible increase in the discount rate. In the context of the Committee's long-run objectives for price ... | 119 |
fomc | 1,994 | Call the roll. | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | Chairman Greenspan Yes Vice Chairman McDonough Yes Governor Blinder Yes President Broaddus Yes President Forrestal Yes President Jordan Yes Governor Kelley Yes Governor LaWare Yes Governor Lindsey Yes President Parry Yes Governor Phillips Yes Governor Yellen Yes | 48 |
fomc | 1,994 | Thank you very much and our next meeting is-- | 10 |
fomc | 1,994 | The 27th. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | September 27th. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | I think, Mr Chairman, we would plan on releasing the statement around 2:15 p.m. as we have been doing. | 27 |
fomc | 1,994 | Yes, but we first need a Board meeting. | 10 |
fomc | 1,994 | Yes, after the Board meeting. | 7 |
fomc | 1,994 | May I suggest that the Board members join me in the other room? | 14 |
fomc | 1,994 | Who would like to move approval of the minutes for the August meeting? | 14 |
fomc | 1,994 | So move. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | Second. | 2 |
fomc | 1,994 | Without objection they are approved. President McDonough. | 11 |
fomc | 1,994 | It is my pleasure, Mr. Chairman, to move the election of Frederic Mishkin as associate economist. Rick, as he is known to his friends, has just joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as our head of Research. He is a distinguished tenured professor at the Columbia Business School, and we are very happy to have him ... | 73 |
fomc | 1,994 | We need a vote on that motion; would somebody like to second it? | 15 |
fomc | 1,994 | Second. | 2 |
fomc | 1,994 | Without objection. We welcome Rick to this organization. Peter Fisher, would you start us off? | 19 |
fomc | 1,994 | [Statement--See Appendix.] | 6 |
fomc | 1,994 | Questions for Peter? | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | I have just one, Peter. You mentioned the potential responsiveness of dollar/yen to rhetoric as much as to what happens on September 30th; whose rhetoric? Let's take it as axiomatic that it won't be Lloyd Bentsen's. | 49 |
fomc | 1,994 | I think it's rhetoric on either side--the United States or Japan. And in this country it's rhetoric from anyone who is perceived to be expressing the inner thinking of the Clinton Administration. | 36 |
fomc | 1,994 | Not Congresspersons? | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | I don't think Congresspersons would be the issue; but anyone who the market could plausibly think is expressing the inner views of key Administration officials, whether in the Treasury or elsewhere, could be a source of pain to the markets. | 46 |
fomc | 1,994 | President Broaddus. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | Peter, I have a question on the proposal in the memorandum. The suggestion just struck me as unusual. Central banks in these relationships normally deal with one another for strong reasons. I was surprised that the Bundesbank wanted to move in this direction. I guess I'm just wondering if there is anything deeper going... | 89 |
fomc | 1,994 | On the contrary, let me make a couple of points. First, most major central banks are much more advanced than we in having some direct dealings in foreign currency government securities markets and in direct activity in those markets through private custodians. I would say that we probably are the only G-10 country that... | 163 |
fomc | 1,994 | They are operating in our markets? | 7 |
fomc | 1,994 | They certainly operate in our markets in that fashion--Joan could perhaps tell you more about that than I could--and certainly in the German market that has developed quite a bit over the last five to eight years. We actually have been receiving quite preferential treatment from the Bundesbank. So I would say in respon... | 93 |
fomc | 1,994 | President McDonough. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | I have a follow-up on Governor Blinder's question. If there were to be rhetoric of a warlike nature from Japanese government officials, I would assume that the effect on the dollar/yen could also be quite dramatic. | 45 |
fomc | 1,994 | Absolutely, yes. I meant to include that in my initial remarks. It could come from either side. | 21 |
fomc | 1,994 | I think it might be worth reminding the Committee that the present Minister of Trade and Industry has in fact had some very tough comments to make, and he would be the official who could very well be deemed to be the appropriate spokesman from their side. | 49 |
fomc | 1,994 | I would remind the Committee--as I think I mentioned at our last meeting--that when the dollar dropped July 30th, 31st, and August 1st on the announcement of Super 301, my view was that rhetoric coming from the Japanese side had caused that drop, albeit as I mentioned last month in rather thin markets in New Zealand. | 72 |
fomc | 1,994 | President Forrestal. | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | Peter, on the memorandum, what kind of increased risks do we incur by moving to a private party and not working with the central bank? | 28 |
fomc | 1,994 | Well, there are a couple of different layers of risk we have to consider. On the one hand, the Bundesbank as a custodian is really not remotely providing the level of service that private sector custodians are capable of offering in terms of attention to detail and quality. It's a very big business and it's very hard f... | 422 |
fomc | 1,994 | President Parry. | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | With regard to your answer to Al Broaddus, are there more comprehensive changes in processes that would be desirable than are proposed here? If so, what stands in the way of implementing them? | 39 |
fomc | 1,994 | I will mention one thing that I may want to bring back to the Committee in February. The System Foreign Account is currently limited in its investments to maturities not exceeding twelve months. When that limit was put in place, it was a simple and relatively effective means of insuring that we did not take too much pr... | 403 |
fomc | 1,994 | Could we arrange a facility with the Bundesbank to discount those securities or to take a loan and use the securities as collateral? | 25 |
fomc | 1,994 | The Bundesbank officials are rather firm in not wanting to give us any assurance of that. Now, whether they would if asked is uncertain, but they are very firm in not giving us any advance comfort. | 41 |
fomc | 1,994 | The purpose of a central bank is to create liquidity. | 11 |
fomc | 1,994 | They're reluctant to do it even in their own market these days. You may have noticed that they just stopped issuing short-term paper. We didn't know that was going to happen. The proposal would take two steps forward, but at the same time take one step back in terms of the overall goal. Notwithstanding President Broadd... | 258 |
fomc | 1,994 | Go ahead, Tom. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | Thanks, Alan. Peter, are there practical constraints in terms of how much we can do? In other words, if we put all of our reserves into the repo market, I think we would probably be in excess of 20 percent of the market. What would represent a practical limit there? Secondly, what are the practices in terms of collater... | 95 |
fomc | 1,994 | Starting with the last, yes, it is comparable. There is a range of practices that runs from being identical to our market to being somewhat less collateralized at the margin than our market. But the range exists. The repo market in European government securities has really been evolving from infancy in-- | 58 |
fomc | 1,994 | So you could pretty much specify what you wanted in that regard? | 13 |
fomc | 1,994 | Yes. Certainly we couldn't put all our reserves into the repo market, and I wouldn't want to. I would imagine always trying to have some balance between directly held or under repo government securities in the BIS and perhaps some amount still at the Bundesbank; we'll have to decide how much. Having a diversity of inst... | 74 |
fomc | 1,994 | We spent a lot of time talking to people in the repo markets as we proceeded, and we learned some hard lessons in that market here. I think there has been some concern that as these repo markets are developing in Europe market participants have not quite learned from our mistakes. So we have been trying, both at the ce... | 122 |
fomc | 1,994 | Thank you. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | President McTeer. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | Peter, you said a good bit more than usual about the Mexican peso this time. Is that just because they had an election in August or is this a reflection of the prospect that we are going to be paying more attention as they increase their role as our trading partner? | 54 |
fomc | 1,994 | The length of my remarks this time was really premised on the fact that we had gone to some efforts anticipating the election and I wanted to follow through. I suppose I could have summarized my remarks by saying how smoothly the Mexican markets and the peso went through the election. | 54 |
fomc | 1,994 | As a technical matter, we still have an offer outstanding to the Bank of Mexico through the end of Friday of this week, September 30. So that's another reason to keep the Committee updated on the situation. | 42 |
fomc | 1,994 | I understand that in May Mexico replaced Japan as our second largest export market, but in July Japan took second place back again. | 25 |
fomc | 1,994 | Yes. My own focus on it is not following the trade account as much as the anticipation that New York banks and dealers, who are in the list of 100 firms planning to open offices in Mexico City, will be trading peso instruments more actively. As a footnote to that, I would note that I asked my counterpart at the Bank of... | 127 |
fomc | 1,994 | Okay, any further questions for Peter? If not, Joan Levitt. | 15 |
fomc | 1,994 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | 7 |
fomc | 1,994 | Did I say "Levitt?" I meant "Lovett." I'm sorry. | 16 |
fomc | 1,994 | I answer to either. [Laughter] [Statement--See Appendix.] | 15 |
fomc | 1,994 | Questions for Joan? | 4 |
fomc | 1,994 | In the intermeeting period there has been a lot of discussion of the exact wording of the announcement that we made in August. Do you think that that has had any impact either on Desk operations or in markets in general? | 44 |
fomc | 1,994 | The part of the statement that was released in August that has captured a lot of attention--and some people have likened it to the sort of attention that Talmudic scholars give--is the "for a time" phraseology. The rest of the announcement followed the format of earlier announcements. It has not had an impact on our op... | 363 |
fomc | 1,994 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | Joan, for most of this year I have been trying to understand the behavior of the yield curve, in particular the part between the 1-year and 2-year maturities. After our February action, we saw a sharp steepening over the next several weeks between the 1-year and the 2-year rates. After the mid-August tightening action,... | 257 |
fomc | 1,994 | I don't want to use a technical argument here because I don't think technical arguments carry weight for long periods of time, but I will say that an awful lot of money has been kept in the short end of the market because people are very cautious; most people feel that rates are going higher still, and the short end ha... | 223 |
fomc | 1,994 | Beyond the technical aspect, the issue I believe is what the market is building in for our prospective actions. As new data have come in, market participants have built in a steeper trajectory of Federal Reserve tightening actions not only over the next few months, taking out the effects of "for a time," but for the ye... | 109 |
fomc | 1,994 | We see, as I mentioned, that people have ratcheted up somewhat further their views about prospective tightening. We see that in the futures contracts for December and in market commentaries. We see it through early next year. Not everyone, as I mentioned, is completely sure about where prices are going to be. There is ... | 73 |
fomc | 1,994 | Any further questions for Joan? | 6 |
fomc | 1,994 | Joan, the two camps you mentioned at the end of your statement--is that majority 51 percent or 85 percent? Seriously, can you give any sense of what the majority is? | 39 |
fomc | 1,994 | At the time I first wrote this earlier, I would have described it as a narrow majority, but over the past week or so I would say it probably has become a more comfortable majority. I think that's the way things have shifted over the past week. People really got caught up in the numbers released last week. They were a b... | 69 |
fomc | 1,994 | Thank you. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | Further questions? If not, would somebody like to move to ratify the actions taken since the last meeting? | 22 |
fomc | 1,994 | So move. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | Second. | 2 |
fomc | 1,994 | Without objection. Let's move on now to the staff report and Messrs. Prell and Truman. | 20 |
fomc | 1,994 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [Statement--See Appendix.] | 13 |
fomc | 1,994 | [Statement--See Appendix.] | 6 |
fomc | 1,994 | Questions for either gentleman? | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | I have a couple. | 5 |
fomc | 1,994 | Go ahead. | 3 |
fomc | 1,994 | I have a couple of questions for Mike. I should have asked these yesterday at the Board briefing but I forgot. The first question is not meant to be a joke, but has to do with the employment report that's coming out at the beginning of next month and the baseball strike. What are you expecting the baseball strike to do... | 78 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.