2013-02-22 · Kurt Wallace
The Mysterious Minutes of the Federal Reserve
For an outfit that is so vocal about clearly communicating with the public, the Federal Reserve sure is good at being mysterious and even obscure.
Look at the way the Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee describes its discussions in the minutes released yesterday. The various viewpoints raised at the meeting are attributed to “participants” rather than identifiable individuals. This creates the initial level of obscurity: who are the participants?
The FOMC has twelve voting members—seven members of the board of governors of the Fed and five of the 12 Reserve Bank Presidents. But all Reserve Bank presidents attend the meetings and participate in the discussions. It’s not entirely clear but it is likely all 19 of these folks count as participants.
The next level of obscurity arises from the way the minutes describe groups of these participants, often using indefinite and imprecise quantifier pronouns.
The policy discussion begins by announcing that Participants hold two views about the economy.