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fomc | 1,995 | I have one other question. What is happening in the markets that is affecting the timing of operations? Are things shifting to other markets, to overseas markets? | 31 |
fomc | 1,995 | No. If the dealer community does more of its financing early in the day, they generally have fewer securities left to finance by the time we would normally enter the market at 11:30 a.m. It is a very mechanical issue. | 48 |
fomc | 1,995 | So it is still domestic. | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | It is just the domestic players and they are just completing their financing. Certainty is better for someone looking to finance a large portfolio than uncertainty, and waiting to find out whether or not we will enter the market has its risks for them. It is not a major issue. On Monday of last week we received only $5... | 120 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | I have a different response from the one Don gave to Susan's question about incentives for innovation. As long as we maintain a distinction between liabilities that are called deposits and liabilities that are not called deposits, there are going to be incentives. If we had a low, broad-based reserve ratio on all nonca... | 89 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes. I suspect this is going to take some major fleshing out. | 15 |
fomc | 1,995 | Any other questions? If not, would somebody like to move ratification of the domestic Desk operations? | 20 |
fomc | 1,995 | So move. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Second. | 2 |
fomc | 1,995 | Without objection. Shall we move on? Let's go to Messrs. Prell and Truman. | 19 |
fomc | 1,995 | [Statement-see Appendix.] | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | [Statement--see Appendix.] | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | Questions for either gentleman? | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mike, you referred to what is happening to labor costs. If you look at what models seem to tell you about what is happening there, in the last three quarters, at least in terms of the model that we look at, inflation in the employment cost index has been lower than predicted by 3/4 percentage point. My impression is th... | 138 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think your characterization of a favorable surprise relative to many typical models is right. When we get surprises, we go back and start tinkering with models. We want to see whether we can fit history better and whether we can, for example, introduce something into these equations such as lagged wages that might ca... | 467 |
fomc | 1,995 | So, the inflation assumptions, which are really quite reasonably optimistic, presume that things are moving back to normal. | 22 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think we will remain below most model forecasts, but we have projected a little acceleration in the growth of compensation costs as we go through the next few quarters. | 32 |
fomc | 1,995 | A very slow decay in the forecast. | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | Very slow. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mike, I also have a couple of questions about labor markets--along somewhat the same lines. One of the persistent stories that we have heard all year from large and small businesses, more so in what are described as tight labor markets than in markets that are not described that way, is how much businesses are spending... | 251 |
fomc | 1,995 | On the first question, if this emphasis on training is a manifestation of poor quality of the labor force, then that presumably has some implication for potential output. In terms of the growth of the labor force, the effective growth is less than it would appear. That tendency can be made up for by investing to improv... | 406 |
fomc | 1,995 | We've attempted to use other measures of labor market slack such as survey measures of jobs and employment, the help wanted index, and a variety of other things that do tend to show readings that would suggest somewhat more slack in the labor markets relative to the unemployment rate. But none of those performed any be... | 68 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think one can make an inference from other expressions of dissatisfaction with the current situation in the economy and just anecdotal evidence from the press and so on that people probably feel that they don't have a lock on their jobs, even in a well-established corporation, the way they once did. There is a sense ... | 100 |
fomc | 1,995 | You might have the staff recalculate the average age of the capital stock as a potential technology variable just to try to capture this sort of thing. I don't know what the result will look like. I suspect it won't work, like most other things! In any event, the anecdotal evidence that is emerging at this stage does s... | 475 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I think you've made a very good point about these levels and changes. It certainly would be a possibility that as unemployment remains in a relatively low zone, though the average duration is remaining relatively long, people would become a little less concerned about their potential vulnerability so that... | 61 |
fomc | 1,995 | That would be even more extreme. | 7 |
fomc | 1,995 | Exactly. | 2 |
fomc | 1,995 | I'm just stipulating that they remain just as insecure. | 11 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes. Your point's well taken. | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | It is a decaying factor on the wage rate change. President Stern. | 15 |
fomc | 1,995 | Ted, would you elaborate a bit on the Daiwa situation and whether that's known in the market? | 20 |
fomc | 1,995 | They announced today, Japanese time, that the head of their New York office had been making false trades for 11 years, which is hard to believe, and had lost roughly $1 billion in the process. They will take that loss in their fiscal half-year results. The news was released early enough to be in The Washington Post. Yo... | 76 |
fomc | 1,995 | I heard something about it on the news this morning, but I didn't see any details. | 18 |
fomc | 1,995 | Peter or someone else may have some more details. They called me last night. The announcement apparently did not affect their markets. The Nikkei, for example, was up 300 points in Tokyo today. | 41 |
fomc | 1,995 | What were they trading in? | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | The claim is that this high official of Daiwa's New York branch had been trading in U.S. bills and bonds in the straight bill and bond markets. He managed to lose between $1 and $1.5 billion over the last 11 years; that is the amount that is unaccounted for. It's a rather extraordinary tale. The relevant authorities in... | 81 |
fomc | 1,995 | You would think there would be enough derivative hedges to secure the position. | 15 |
fomc | 1,995 | Maybe I could expand on this a little, Mr. Chairman. | 13 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes. | 2 |
fomc | 1,995 | He was dealing in cash government securities and making up the losses by taking securities out of the custody account. He was in charge of the custody section of the Daiwa branch in New York and also was allowed to trade in government securities. | 47 |
fomc | 1,995 | They are a primary dealer, Bill? | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes. His confession, which was written in mid-July when he paid a visit to Japan, indicates that he falsified the records, managed to set up a separate clearing account on his trading as compared with that of others, and suffered capital losses of about $850 million and losses of about another $250 million in interest ... | 269 |
fomc | 1,995 | Does their chairman earn several billion a year? | 9 |
fomc | 1,995 | Is there any evidence of a motive? | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | No. The confession is really extraordinary. It would lend itself to a great soap opera. He suffered losses that were small initially. He wanted to hide them because of the disgrace that it would bring to the bank. The pressure was so great that he went through a divorce. The confession implies that he made a mistake an... | 74 |
fomc | 1,995 | Why did he start in the first place? What was his motive originally? Was it personal? | 19 |
fomc | 1,995 | No. The confession does not lend itself to an interpretation of personal greed. Obviously, that's one of the things we have to look into. | 28 |
fomc | 1,995 | Is there any evidence in the way it was structured that he would be able to draw funds for his own account? | 23 |
fomc | 1,995 | He certainly was in a position to do so because he was in effect running a separate bank that nobody, according to the confession, but himself knew about. Therefore, he certainly was in a position to siphon off funds for his own benefit very easily. | 51 |
fomc | 1,995 | Why do we assume that this was not the obvious motive, and why are we looking beyond that? | 20 |
fomc | 1,995 | At this stage, we're assuming that that could be the motive; we're assuming that he could have accomplices; we're assuming all kinds of things over and above that which this confession would lead one to believe. | 41 |
fomc | 1,995 | Supposing that were a motive, and obviously we don't know, and say hypothetically that he had succeeded and replenished all the relevant funds and the like, would there be any supervisory mechanism to detect that? | 42 |
fomc | 1,995 | The answer is, I don't think so but-- | 10 |
fomc | 1,995 | I would conclude that we have no evidence that there may not have been other significant successful endeavors by people throughout history that were never uncovered. My own judgment is that there is a limit to what the most assiduous bank examiner can do in a situation where somebody engages in a practice in which he t... | 77 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think the ability of somebody who was as successful as this guy was at fraud--a lot more successful than he appears to have been as a securities trader-- | 32 |
fomc | 1,995 | His teacher was an accountant! | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | According to the confession, he managed to lose money whichever way the market went. [Laughter] I think that a very successful dealer/operator of a fraud could go on for a very extended period of time and never be caught. | 46 |
fomc | 1,995 | That's why separation of duties is so important. | 9 |
fomc | 1,995 | Exactly, and I think that is all the more reason why we have to be very assiduous in our evaluation of internal auditing processes and of apparent internal conflicts of interest built into the system. Unless we can do that, I don't know what we can do. Even with that, somebody is always clever enough to figure a way ar... | 75 |
fomc | 1,995 | In three examinations that were done by the New York Bank on the Daiwa branch, the constant theme was that the audit controls were not adequate. We actually got them to improve the audit controls very considerably. Just an interesting anecdote: They had two locations, one in the World Trade Center and one in Rockefelle... | 170 |
fomc | 1,995 | That's nice. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | It's a little difficult to believe that nobody had a clue as to what this guy was up to when that sort of thing was going on. | 28 |
fomc | 1,995 | This organization has no claim to be a primary dealer. | 11 |
fomc | 1,995 | They are not a primary dealer, excuse me. This is the bank. The securities firm is an entirely separate legal entity. | 25 |
fomc | 1,995 | Okay. | 2 |
fomc | 1,995 | The securities firm is the primary dealer. This is a branch bank trust department. | 16 |
fomc | 1,995 | Okay, that's good. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Blinder. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | I was going to raise a question about job security, but I'm not sure it's appropriate. [Laughter] | 22 |
fomc | 1,995 | We know one person whose job security is--. Has he been fired? | 15 |
fomc | 1,995 | He has been fired as of the 25th of September. Officially, we do not know where he is, but we are reasonably certain he is in the hands of the U.S. Attorney. | 41 |
fomc | 1,995 | If I'm not mistaken, the duration, or the amount of long-term unemployment, is high at current unemployment rates. This has to mean by the laws of arithmetic that the amount of turnover and of short-duration unemployment are low. I guess my first thought would have been that job insecurity comes from turnover; you worr... | 71 |
fomc | 1,995 | No. | 2 |
fomc | 1,995 | You can get it back. | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes, that's right. I said that was my first thought. Maybe it's wrong. Maybe it's duration. | 21 |
fomc | 1,995 | No, if I feel insecure, I'm not going to leave. | 13 |
fomc | 1,995 | Moreover, for any given amount of unemployment, if it were disproportionately short term it would suggest that people were able to find jobs relatively quickly. | 28 |
fomc | 1,995 | It's disproportionately long. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | But when there's a lot of long-term unemployment, that would suggest there may be some difficulty for people who have been displaced, for example, with all the restructuring. | 33 |
fomc | 1,995 | The separation rate and the rehire rate are relatively low, right? | 14 |
fomc | 1,995 | That's correct. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes. Certainly, the hypothesis for years was that the separation rate matters most. Firing was the key thing in job security. That may have been wrong. | 32 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think that was the leading hypothesis for a long time. | 12 |
fomc | 1,995 | We don't know the facts. | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | Right. It was an economy move by the BLS to stop collecting those data. Now, they are going to economize more, too! | 29 |
fomc | 1,995 | That was a long time ago. | 7 |
fomc | 1,995 | 1981. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | The other question was for Ted. Should we be reading recent events as an escalation of the anti-EMU campaign? This is a two-part question. Should we expect that to continue to weigh against the dollar? There seems to be no inherent reason why that should be anti-dollar, but in practice it always seems to weigh on the d... | 68 |
fomc | 1,995 | Peter has some comments. Let me give you mine. What I tried to suggest in my briefing is that this is a process that is going to go on for years. It's going to be up and down and up and down. As different countries and institutions within the countries jockey for position, there will be, I think, a heightening of the d... | 298 |
fomc | 1,995 | I'll just insert there: A number of the European countries continue to prefer to hold a relatively large portion of their reserves in dollars for investment purposes. But in a crisis, they want to convert those into marks to be able to defend their own currency. There are two effects on the market that in the very shor... | 80 |
fomc | 1,995 | That shouldn't affect the level of the dollar in the long run. | 13 |
fomc | 1,995 | No, it shouldn't. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | You have the accumulation of those dollars to begin with. | 11 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes. I'm referring to a very short-run effect. Countries have a tendency to hold large quantities of dollars and then convert them into marks to defend their own currency. They also have a preference for acquiring reserves that way. Even if their ultimate goal is to acquire marks, they will try to move into the dollar ... | 184 |
fomc | 1,995 | Is there concern that the dramatic shift in funds that has been going on in recent weeks could erode German political support for the EMU to a point where it would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement the EMU on schedule? I am referring to the shift from deutschemarks by German investors into Swiss francs that... | 113 |
fomc | 1,995 | It's certainly a possibility. How big it is, I don't know. | 14 |
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