Source stringclasses 1
value | Date int64 1.98k 2.01k | Text stringlengths 2 27.1k | Token_count int64 1 5.57k |
|---|---|---|---|
fomc | 1,995 | In some sense, yes! Turning to the national scene, we are very much in agreement with the Greenbook scenario. I must say that I have a lot of sympathy for the 4 or 5 points that Mike Prell mentioned as potential sources, if you will, of upside risks to the forecast. We looked at some of those and thought that there is ... | 169 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Broaddus. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, there really has not been a lot of change in the quite mixed situation in our region that I reported on at the November meeting. I would have to say, however, that the broad tone of most of the anecdotal commentary we are getting is less optimistic than earlier. Looking at the District's economy sector by... | 336 |
fomc | 1,995 | We won't get a 1987 dollar figure. The waters could be muddied in other ways, but we do think the third quarter looks stronger than it did before. | 34 |
fomc | 1,995 | I am still thinking of it in terms of those 1987 figures and that would be a much, much stronger performance than I think anyone was expecting back last summer. Given that, I think a key question at this point is whether that much stronger quarterly gain will be followed by another stronger-than-anticipated performance... | 602 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Melzer. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thanks, Alan. I have four general points to make today. The first is that the Eighth District economy continues to grow at a moderate pace. District retailers expect this holiday season to be somewhat better than last year's. About half of District auto dealers report autumn sales levels above those of last year, and t... | 1,217 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Stern. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start by saying that I agree with Mike's comment that the expansion at the national level has not run out of steam and that it will continue. As far as the Ninth District economy is concerned, it remains in pretty good shape, although the anecdotes this time around are perhaps a bit more... | 706 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Moskow. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, the level of economic activity in the Seventh District continues to be somewhat higher on balance than that for the nation, but the recent pattern of slowing growth seems to parallel what is happening nationally. I should note that our directors at their meeting last week expressed somewhat more concern a... | 895 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you. President McTeer. | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | The economy in the Eleventh District continues to be healthy. Throughout 1995, we kept hearing that employment growth had slowed in our District and that we were converging toward the slower rate of growth in the nation as a whole. These District estimates kept being revised up. Through October, employment growth has b... | 385 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Hoenig. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, the Tenth District economy remains strong overall, with only a couple of our directors indicating some evidence of slight slowing. Payroll employment in the District, for example, has been growing at a fairly healthy pace with gains in all our District states. Among other signs of strength, District manuf... | 587 |
fomc | 1,995 | President-elect Guynn. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Southeast continues to grow at a rate that appears to be above the national average. Thus far, no sector appears to be overextended. Wage and price pressures are stable. Our District's pretty extensive manufacturers' survey shows no net movement in either input or final goods prices. The sc... | 582 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Kelley. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, it does seem that fourth-quarter growth is somewhat slower than the torrid pace of the third quarter, and that slowing may be in response to that torrid pace. But I continue to be quite optimistic that this slowing is not very likely to be indicative of an undue weakness beginning to set in. I certainly c... | 628 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Yellen. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Although we have obtained a significant slug of new data on the economy since our last meeting, my view concerning the outlook has changed very little. I continue to think that the inflation outlook is favorable, that growth is likely to proceed at a moderate pace over the next year, and that u... | 1,054 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Phillips. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The economy has been considerably stronger than we might have expected, with growth probably exceeding 5 percent for the third quarter and higher than 3 percent, or at least in the vicinity of 3 percent, for the year 1995. The question for us is how much momentum we can expect going forward. Th... | 993 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The only new piece of information of an optimistic type coming from our District was a report that recent shipments and backlogged orders for candlewicks were at record levels. [Laughter] I have not seen that indicator before, and I don't know if staff can attest to its reliability! One of the ... | 1,226 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Blinder. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | I am going to be blissfully brief. As I sat down last night to write some notes for this meeting, I remembered something my basketball coach taught me when I was very young about shooting free throws. He used to say: the basket is the same, the ball is the same, why can't you be the same? Here we are in December, and I... | 882 |
fomc | 1,995 | Let's break for coffee. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | [Statement--see Appendix.] | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | Questions for Don? | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Don, ignoring lags and transition problems, in a future steady state environment with nominal spending expanding at a 3 to 4 percent rate, output growing at potential, and the economy perceived to be at full employment with price stability, in what ball park would you guess the nominal fed funds rate would fall? | 62 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think under those circumstances it would be below where it is now. You are talking about 2 percentage points less inflation than now, 1 percent instead of 3 percent. So, as a first approximation, I would shave 2 percentage points off the nominal funds rate just to keep the real funds rate from rising, since inflation... | 410 |
fomc | 1,995 | Maybe you answered it with this matrix and your other remarks. It is all very interesting. Maybe I didn't understand what you were saying; I am trying to clarify it. Starting from where we are today--the perception of full employment, an economy operating at capacity, the current funds rate, and the inherited inflation... | 96 |
fomc | 1,995 | What is the transition mechanism for getting inflation down? | 10 |
fomc | 1,995 | What are the conditions under which you would say, without economic slack occurring or being forecast, that we move from the 5-3/4 percent funds rate to that steady state funds rate? | 39 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think there are two points. One would be that slack occurs that you had not anticipated, perhaps because potential is higher than you thought or there is a shortfall in demand you had not anticipated. When that occurs, you are going to have a little slack in the economy. You react to get rid of that slack, but meanwh... | 367 |
fomc | 1,995 | Vice Chairman McDonough. | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | Don, without benefit of your very good two pages, which would have saved me a good deal of work last night, I spoke in favor of the opportunistic approach this morning. Since we don't agree with the Greenbook, I guess our model would fit in your matrix where you have disinflation pressures and would then move down to t... | 121 |
fomc | 1,995 | I am not sitting in moral judgment here. I think it is a question of your ultimate goal and the gains you think you are getting from your ultimate goal--that is, price stability--and the losses you are willing to incur to get there. If you really believe that 1 percent inflation would produce over time a lot higher pro... | 164 |
fomc | 1,995 | Just a comment: I think you could be equally convinced of the benefits of getting to the low inflation rate but just decide that the price of getting there very quickly is excessive. There would be no difference in the goal, in my view, only in the speed at which you are willing to get there and the cost to society tha... | 72 |
fomc | 1,995 | That's a good point. A lot of models put in utility functions that penalize large misses from output more than small misses from output. On the other hand, if you think that the world is pretty linear and symmetric, in the end it's not so clear. I think it's an open question if you really want to get there, whether goi... | 107 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Broaddus. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Don, I just want to make sure that I understand the paradigm completely, not using the current policy issues so much as a bit of recent history. I would be interested to know, within the context of this, how you would interpret our initial tightening back in 1994. I would have thought of that intuitively as opportunist... | 121 |
fomc | 1,995 | I would interpret it under 3.b.i. in my outline, that is, leaning hard against potential increases in inflation. As you saw inflation developing, you moved vigorously against it. So, I think it's perfectly consistent with the opportunistic strategy. Some of this may be a bit endogenous since the people who practice tha... | 116 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Parry. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Don, I would like to focus on the middle column of your bottom chart. Would you speak specifically as to what this column means to you in the current situation? When I look at the Philadelphia survey of inflationary expectations, it seems to me that the first thing to make assumptions about is ... | 136 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think that from the perspective of the real world situation of the last six months, it is a little fuzzier than it seems in these boxes. For one thing, I think the Committee anticipated a drop in inflation and inflation expectations when it cut the funds rate in July. That's why you did it. Inflation had come up, and... | 301 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Lindsey. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Don, I am a little surprised that you recommend responding to a supply shock or a demand shock in the same way in your matrix. I would have expected different signs. The easiest way for me to think about it is to suppose the reverse happens if you have a negative supply shock, say an oil embargo, versus a positive dema... | 125 |
fomc | 1,995 | I am not sure I followed you entirely, but there are a couple of points. Part of this is the asymmetry of the opportunistic strategy. Several types of supply shocks are possible, and I think that is a complication as well. If you are looking at the middle panel here with a positive supply shock, cutting nominal rates e... | 250 |
fomc | 1,995 | I will talk to you another time. | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | Okay. | 2 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Blinder. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | The answer to that question obviously depends, among other things, on whether you think the shock is temporary or permanent. That is extremely important. Larry is looking at a temporary shock, and I believe Don is thinking about one that is permanent. That is not the only variable but it is critical. I want to make a c... | 1,115 |
fomc | 1,995 | I thought in effect that's what I had in the lower row here. One way to think about this--the way I thought about it as I was writing it--was that the upper row had the Greenbook assumption and the equilibrium real rate approximately where it is now. The lower row had some words like this-- | 63 |
fomc | 1,995 | I would have labeled the top row as having a real equilibrium short rate of 2.75 percent and the bottom row as having a rate of less than 2.75 percent. | 37 |
fomc | 1,995 | That's exactly what I had in mind. I was not taking a stand since I had two alternatives here, but I think those notions of the real rate were behind these alternatives. I want to go to one other comment that you made because I think it raises an interesting issue that I tried to point out as we were going through this... | 298 |
fomc | 1,995 | I agree with that. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Any further questions for Don? If not, let me start off. I will take a little more time than usual because despite the short-term budget turmoil and all sorts of churning in the economy, in concert with Don's endeavor to sketch out longer-term policy issues, I want to raise a broad hypothesis about where the economy is... | 2,518 |
fomc | 1,995 | The positive supply shock square in Don's chart. | 10 |
fomc | 1,995 | Yes, the positive supply shock square. However, before I go too far, let me repeat what I said when I first raised this issue about worker insecurity and wages. If at a fixed degree of job insecurity there is an associated rise in real wages, then at a higher level of job insecurity we would get the same trend at a low... | 1,294 |
fomc | 1,995 | I think you have laid out an extraordinarily intriguing and interesting scenario. When preparing for this meeting and looking at the forces in the economy, our use of a traditional Keynesian framework to evaluate the Greenbook forecast led us to agree with that forecast--the patterns of good solid growth, stable inflat... | 466 |
fomc | 1,995 | Vice Chairman. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, on the basis of my earlier comments, nobody will be surprised that I think your policy recommendation is right, for the right reasons, and in the right amount. I don't think we should expect the market to be particularly pleased with our action. There is a fair likelihood that the market correction in bot... | 326 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Blinder. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am one of those opportunists who think that we have the real funds rate too high. As you said, it's higher than it was at the peak of our tightening. I don't see a reason to keep it there. I hope you will allow me to agree with the reasons that you gave for lowering the rate without signing o... | 190 |
fomc | 1,995 | Anything on symmetry? | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Symmetric is fine with me. | 7 |
fomc | 1,995 | Symmetric will be okay with me. | 8 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Melzer. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thanks, Alan. Not surprisingly I would prefer alternative B because I think we have the opportunity to move inflation and inflation expectations lower in the context of an economy that is continuing to expand generally in line with the 10-year moving average. I also feel very strongly that 3 percent inflation expectati... | 344 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Broaddus. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I won't say anything about the budget, but I might just mention the economy in passing. I think your longer-term vision of what I would describe as a permanent or at least persistent positive supply shock is an appealing hypothesis and may well be a valid one. But in talking about today's policy decision,... | 344 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Lindsey. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having dissented in favor of ease last time, I am reminded of Governor Blinder's basketball coach. I certainly support your recommendation. I also support your view that there should be no mention of fiscal policy in our statement, but I do think that in fact there will be some linkage made and... | 290 |
fomc | 1,995 | I don't think the Committee would want to cut rates in that case. | 14 |
fomc | 1,995 | No, a rise in rates. | 7 |
fomc | 1,995 | A rise in interest rates, yes. So, we should make ourselves even more miserable! I think this sort of analysis tends to break down, and that's why I have problems with the difference between a demand shock and a supply shock. Basically, when it comes to government actions on the supply side, I really don't think that w... | 299 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Stern. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, Don, let me say that I appreciate your effort here in looking at opportunistic versus deliberate strategies. I found this very helpful. I understand better what I meant! [Laughter] | 48 |
fomc | 1,995 | I'm glad you do, Gary! [Laughter] | 11 |
fomc | 1,995 | Maybe I'm the only one. Just to talk a minute about that, I do think the opportunistic approach is the one we ought to follow. I say that because as I understand the evidence and given the quality of the evidence, and both may be flawed--that is, my understanding and the evidence [Laughter]--it doesn't suggest that the... | 314 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Moskow. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I really appreciated your discussion of longer-term trends. You discussed some of them in your talk when you were out in Chicago, and I think that has been very helpful. My preference actually is to wait at this meeting and not to move today. To quote Mike Prell, growth is not steady and we had a very str... | 235 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Parry. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I don't believe that a rising real funds rate is warranted at this time. Also, our nominal income targeting rule that we follow calls for a cut in the funds rate of about 25 basis points. Therefore, I favor your recommendation and also the symmetric language you proposed. At least in terms of the work tha... | 138 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Phillips. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | I can support your recommendation for a small easing move, but I don't think that the case is very strong; we could wait. The economy is growing; the stock market is strong; the Wall Street Journal says we are off the hook; and the shrimp index is up! But we are behind the yield curve, perhaps by 50 to 75 basis points.... | 262 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Kelley. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I certainly support your recommendation. As I said earlier, I see no strong pressures for a change in monetary policy at this moment one way or the other, and under those conditions my normal instinct would be to not move. I think the risks are symmetric and relatively small at this point. But of course w... | 127 |
fomc | 1,995 | Governor Yellen. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I support your proposal. I think we have good reasons to feel pleased with the performance of the economy over the last 18 months. Our job now, as I perceive it, is simply to enable these favorable trends to continue. For the reasons that I have already enumerated, I think the current level of the real fu... | 274 |
fomc | 1,995 | President McTeer. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | I agree with the proposal. | 6 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Hoenig. | 4 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I would prefer that we not change the funds rate right now given the projections of our economists in Kansas City and in the Greenbook. However, given that we are talking about a small adjustment and given that there would be the expectation, which I would fully endorse, of no discount rate change, I can ... | 72 |
fomc | 1,995 | President-elect Guynn. | 5 |
fomc | 1,995 | As my earlier comments suggested, I prefer alternative A. I think 25 basis points and a symmetrical directive are the right construct. I don't think I can add to the arguments that already have been made and will spare you a repetition of those arguments. | 50 |
fomc | 1,995 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,995 | Mr. Chairman, I think that over time the evidence will accumulate that your hypothesis is correct. I am concerned that that evidence will accumulate very slowly, judged in terms of being persuasive to everybody within the System and to others who need to think about these things. The slow but eventual acceptance of the... | 105 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.