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value | Date int64 1.98k 2.01k | Text stringlengths 2 27.1k | Token_count int64 1 5.57k |
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fomc | 1,998 | President Guynn. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because the Sixth District economy is little changed since our last meeting, I will try to keep my remarks shorter than usual this morning. Over the summer, the Sixth District has continued its steady but modest expansion. Retailers expect sales growth to persist, and a significant number of ne... | 773 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Minehan. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The New England economy remains strong, but weakness related to Asia and the GM strike and increased labor and real estate market pressures are evident. Unemployment rates for the region's states were a full percentage point below that for the nation in July, and job growth was a full percentag... | 911 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Boehne. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, will try to be brief. Not a lot has changed in the Philadelphia District. The region generally remains strong, although growth has slowed. This is showing up in manufacturing where the effects of Asia are apparent, particularly with producers of building materials, chemicals, and machin... | 407 |
fomc | 1,998 | Vice Chair. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Second District's economy has continued to expand at a strong pace since our last report, led by real estate and construction. Job growth moderated a little in June, but it was brisk in the second quarter overall. Retailers report continued very good sales in July, notably of home durables.... | 629 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The autoworkers in our part of the country have ended their very welcome summer break and have gone back to productive activities, giving the theme parks and other tourist attractions a little relief. They are looking forward to the start of school so that they can get a little more relief. Eve... | 1,813 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Poole. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Conditions in the Eighth District are substantially the same as they have been in recent months. Labor markets remain tight. Labor shortages are abundant, particularly in professional areas. Builders are unable to satisfy demand in some markets. The agricultural economy in the Eighth District is in fairly good shape. T... | 1,480 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Gramlich. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The expansion clearly is weakening. Real GDP according to the Greenbook is already below the trend growth rate in this half year, and it falls even shorter in the next half year. Unemployment rises in all of the Greenbook scenarios. Depending on the stock market, the rate of unemployment may at... | 648 |
fomc | 1,998 | First Vice President Varvel. | 6 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a real honor for me to be here representing our Bank and subbing for Al Broaddus. You may know that Al's son was married this weekend. He had an extended trip out of town. He wanted to be sure the Committee knew that the economy of western North Carolina was receiving a big boost this pas... | 710 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Rivlin. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | We in the FOMC tend to concentrate on what has happened since we last met, this magical period known only in this room as the intermeeting period, but I find it interesting to go back a little further sometimes. In this case, I went back to March, which is only five months ago, and found myself very impressed, which is... | 795 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Ferguson. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I review the current economic outlook I am, like others, struck by the strong but at least currently balanced forces that appear to be shaping the future. Potentially weakening developments stemming from the external sector seem to be balanced against a currently strong domestic sector, alth... | 1,263 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Meyer. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I expect both slower growth and higher inflation over the next year and a half. However, I expect faster growth than in the Greenbook forecast, with the rate of expansion in GDP closer to trend and a slower rate of increase in potential output. These two factors combine to yield a lower path fo... | 1,459 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Kelley. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The morning has moved well along and I am the last in the queue, I believe, so I will be very brief. At the last meeting, the Committee was wrestling with the very uncomfortable dilemma of having two sets of concerns that pulled in very different directions. We have been wrestling with the same... | 449 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you. Shall we break for coffee? | 9 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Kohn. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In opting to keep the stance of policy unchanged at recent meetings, the Committee has been balancing its expectation that policy most likely will need eventually to tighten to forestall an uptrend in inflation against the possibilities that developments in the global economy could make that ti... | 1,900 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you. Questions for Don? If not, let me proceed. I do not have very much to add to what has been discussed around the table this morning. I am in the group that sees no evidence yet that economic and financial conditions are stabilizing in Asia. Indeed, many of you have noted that conditions there continue to dete... | 1,742 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think your analysis was exactly right in regard to where we should be with the federal funds rate, that is, alternative B. I very strongly prefer that we move to a symmetric directive for reasons that I stated earlier and that were expressed by most of the people in the go-around. Risks have ... | 155 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Rivlin. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I agree, Mr. Chairman, that a symmetric directive makes sense at this moment. Such a directive reflects my view that we are unlikely to change monetary policy anytime soon and that, when we do, we may move the fed funds rate up or down. Now, I have been wrong before. We all have been wrong before. The only argument tha... | 142 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Meyer. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I strongly support your recommendation for no change in policy at this meeting, but I want to focus my attention on the issue of symmetry versus asymmetry. In my view, the very tight labor markets impose a natural asymmetry to policy in relation to growth prospects. Specifically, a forec... | 352 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Minehan. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I, too, am in agreement with your recommendation of alternative B. I have mixed feelings about whether or not to change the symmetry of our directive at this meeting. The reason is that I continue to believe that our next move should be to raise the federal funds rate, and I think we would be better off right now from ... | 209 |
fomc | 1,998 | President McTeer. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | I have a strong preference for symmetry for the reasons already stated. | 13 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Ferguson. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation of alternative B. I have a mild preference for symmetry. With President Minehan, I still have some concern about the risks of rising inflation, but I also agree that the external sector has become more uncertain. I sense that symmetry is the best way to communicate these conc... | 65 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Gramlich. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will support alternative B. As I have said before, I would like to see us move to a regime where we could move the funds rate more often--not randomly but more often. [Laughter] I don't think that would look silly or needs to look silly, and I will go back to my example of using the gas pedal... | 83 |
fomc | 1,998 | Except on the highway? | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | A highway with hills. On the directive, if we cannot move the funds rate around, I would certainly like to move the symmetry clause around. I think the risks are roughly symmetric now, so I would definitely support going to symmetry. | 47 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Stem. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, favor alternative B and I also support symmetry. I almost always am in favor of symmetry. It has the advantage in this case of being appropriate. [Laughter] | 44 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Parry. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, I also support your recommendation for "B." I agree that the risks are greater than they were at the time of our previous meeting, and I think there has been some shift toward the downside. So, I would favor moving toward symmetry. I would suggest, though, that it is a little unfortunate that we will be r... | 105 |
fomc | 1,998 | Yes. Don has that scheduled. As you know, we were contemplating doing it today. We just could not get the material together in time. | 29 |
fomc | 1,998 | I know. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Hoenig. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I support your recommendation for alternative B. Frankly, I have mixed emotions about the symmetry issue. If I were asked, I would probably retain the asymmetry at this point, given the strong domestic demand, but I am very comfortable with symmetry as well. | 52 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Poole. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I support alternative B. I also support a symmetrical directive because I think that the risks are far more symmetrical now than they have been during the previous few months since I became a member of this Committee. I would like to point out that a key feature of the policy regime in recent years is that the market h... | 231 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Kelley. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, I can certainly accept your "no change" recommendation. As far as the symmetries go, I can accept symmetry without great angst because I think there clearly is a strong case for it. But I would prefer to stay with asymmetry because the basic structure of the risks that we have been living with for some ti... | 117 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Jordan. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For what it's worth, during the break I got the data used by the staff to calculate the median CPI. It takes us a little longer to compute this number after we get the BLS statistics. The number for July is 3.0 percent. For July-to-July, it is 2.8 percent. I would take that as the best estimate... | 558 |
fomc | 1,998 | I think we ought to blame Alan Greenspan! | 10 |
fomc | 1,998 | I learned it from John von Neumann! | 9 |
fomc | 1,998 | The other thing on which we as economists place more emphasis was his work with Oskar Morgenstern on the calculus of decisionmaking using mathematical formulations of the minimax type. This helps us to identify which kinds of errors we are willing to make and which are the most difficult to correct. In that light, I st... | 142 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Boehne. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | I support a "no change" policy, and I think the risks have shifted sufficiently to justify a symmetric directive. | 23 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Moskow. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation for "no change" in policy. On the directive, it is a close call. I think that on balance the risks are still marginally on the upside. So, I would have a slight preference for an asymmetric directive but I can support a symmetric directive. | 61 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Guynn. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I prefer alternative B as well. I am at the same place as Governor Kelley. I have a slight preference for continuing the asymmetrical directive, at least for a while longer. It seems to me that given the extraordinary visibility and publicity of the Asian and Russian problems, we could give too much weight today to tho... | 149 |
fomc | 1,998 | First Vice President Varvel. | 6 |
fomc | 1,998 | We would agree that the downside risks have increased, but we still believe that the upside risks are greater, given the strength in domestic demand. So, we would continue to favor a smaller increase in the fed funds rate sooner rather than a larger increase that could well be needed later. There obviously is a lot of ... | 87 |
fomc | 1,998 | There seems to be a fairly large concentration of preferences around "B" symmetric. Would you read the appropriate directive? | 23 |
fomc | 1,998 | The draft directive is on page 13 of the Bluebook, which follows a lot of charts and tables: "In the implementation of policy for the immediate future, the Committee seeks conditions in reserve markets consistent with maintaining the federal funds rate at an average of around 5-1/2 percent. In the context of the Commit... | 135 |
fomc | 1,998 | Call the roll. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Chairman Greenspan Yes Vice Chairman McDonough Yes Governor Ferguson Yes Governor Gramlich Yes President Hoenig Yes President Jordan No Governor Kelley Yes Governor Meyer Yes President Minehan Yes President Poole Yes Governor Rivlin Yes | 43 |
fomc | 1,998 | The next meeting will be on September 29. We will adjourn for lunch, at which time two topics will be discussed. | 26 |
fomc | 1,998 | We are getting under way a bit early, but I am sure we will use the time productively. Would somebody like to move approval of the minutes? I want to call your attention to the addition of a reference in the minutes to our recent telephone conference. I trust all of you have looked at it and that there is no objection ... | 75 |
fomc | 1,998 | Move approval. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | Without objection. The second item on the agenda involves a continuation of discussions we've had on the issue of disclosure. In its memorandum, the staff winnowed down our earlier considerations, and the options now seem fairly straightforward. There is no urgency to implement any of them, and I think we should contin... | 186 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, after reading the memo and participating in several discussions of this question, my inclination is to go with Option 1. With regard to that option, the simpler and more straightforward the language, the better. Indeed, I would simplify the language even further. For the symmetric alternative, I would say... | 266 |
fomc | 1,998 | I gather by implication that we have concluded in our previous discussions that variations in wording to describe differing degrees of tilt have not served us very well. As you know, in the past we have had hard tilts, medium tilts, tilted tilts, biased tilts, and who knows what else! | 61 |
fomc | 1,998 | We need an interpreter to figure out what all that means. That is true even for us, let alone the public. | 24 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Guynn. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, I share Tom Hoenig's views pretty much down the line. I come to this, as I said last time, with a sense that the more information we can put out promptly, the better. The more quickly markets react, the more the policy uncertainty premiums that might otherwise get built into markets are reduced. So, I wou... | 85 |
fomc | 1,998 | Tom, did you also say you favored releasing the tilt immediately? | 13 |
fomc | 1,998 | Yes, I would be in favor of releasing it promptly after each meeting with the simpler, clearer language. | 21 |
fomc | 1,998 | I think it is important as we continue this discussion to be sure that we all have the same objectives. In my view, the first and foremost objective is to make our intent clear. I think the staff does a really nice job on page 2 of their memo where they express their sense of what we mean by the tilt, namely that it re... | 468 |
fomc | 1,998 | As a central bank, we should at least recognize that M2 and M3 exist, no matter what we do with them. [Laughter] | 30 |
fomc | 1,998 | I accept that! Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | 11 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Minehan. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I am very much in agreement with Presidents Hoenig and Guynn. I favor Option 1, prompt release after a meeting, and simpler language. I, too, tried to draft language that would underscore the concept of risk to which both Tom and Jack seemed to be referring. I also believe that the minutes should be released sooner tha... | 85 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Parry. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I basically support what the three Presidents who preceded me said about making a prompt announcement, and I would release the operational paragraph when we change the tilt. I have to say that I find the language in Option 2 relating to the tilt to be somewhat preferable to that in Option 1, though both certainly are b... | 145 |
fomc | 1,998 | President McTeer. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | Just to play devil's advocate, I would like to suggest that we'd be better off not formally voting on a tilt. Therefore, we wouldn't have the decision to make on how to release that vote. I understand that having the tilt as an option may help with consensus building and arriving at a decision during any given meeting,... | 156 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Rivlin. | 4 |
fomc | 1,998 | I agree with Option 1 as amended by Tom Hoenig. I thought the staff draft was a quite good breakthrough in terms of added clarity and straightforwardness, and Tom has made it a bit better. I suspect that what will happen if we know we are announcing the tilt is that we will be less likely to have one. We may, if there ... | 185 |
fomc | 1,998 | Governor Meyer. | 3 |
fomc | 1,998 | I continue to favor immediate announcement of the tilt. I thought Tom Hoenig and Jack Guynn presented the arguments extremely well, and I believe Tom improved the draft language a little. I recognize that there is some danger that an immediate announcement could reduce the use of the tilt. However, if we are discipline... | 115 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Broaddus. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | Mr. Chairman, I continue to believe that the more information and the clearer the information, the better. So, I agree with the majority here. I like the language of Option 1, and I think Tom Hoenig has improved it. With Tom's changes, that option strikes me as a huge improvement over what we have now. I would release ... | 83 |
fomc | 1,998 | President Boehne. | 5 |
fomc | 1,998 | I agree with the simpler language. I, too, think that Tom has improved it, and I would go with that. While I realize that it's difficult to be against providing more information, I continue to have some problems with immediate release of the tilt. I am for more information as a general matter, but I believe the practic... | 293 |
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