Wednesday, September 21, 2016

FEDERAL RESERVE SPLIT ‘One of the Most Divisive FOMC Meetings in Recent Memory’

Fed Chair Janet Yellen

Federal Reserve officials following a two-day meeting Wednesday said they would leave interest rates unchanged, however, as earlier reported,  three of the current 10 voting members dissented and wanted a rate hike.

This is very, very unusual.

Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics in a note to clients wrote, "This seems to have been one of the most divisive FOMC meetings in recent memory...At the same time, however, looking at the new projections, three of the 17 Fed officials at the meeting now expect no rate hike whatsoever this year."

Dissents by meeting have generally averaged well under one per meeting since 1936 as calculated by Daniel L. Thornton and David C. Wheelock at the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The peak was 1.42 dissents per meeting during the poorly managed G. William Miller tenure as Fed chairman:

The Bernanke era never had 3 dissents.  You have to go back to the early Alan Grennsapn years of the 1990s when there was talk Greenspan was losing control of the Fed to see 3 or more dissents, outside of a December 2014 3 vote dissent under Yellen. But the 3 vote December dissent was on wording of the FOMC statement, not on a dissent on a rate hike.

(Via Gerlach-Kristen and Meade)

-RW

3 comments:

  1. Maybe the dissents are theater or entertainment. Instead of reality television, reality Fed.

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  2. I really think they're just groping in the dark.

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  3. 7 to 2 vote in favor to keep rates unchanged. This sounds like a decisive group to you, Wenzel? As I said before, stop soliciting cock from the Castro...err I mean advice from Goldman on how the FED decides monetary policy. Do your own analysis if you can rub together a couple of brain cells.

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