A decision to reveal forecasts for the federal funds rate starting this month represents the biggest step toward openness since Bernanke took office in 2006 moncler jackets promising greater transparency, according to Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a former Fed board economist. The central bank didn’t even start announcing changes in interest rates until 1994.
“This is a complete 180-degree shift from the old mysterious-institution approach,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economic research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. “There’s been a steady move toward opening up the central bank to outside scrutiny and trying to explain to the public the logic of what they’re doing.”
The first forecasts will be announced after the Jan. 24-25 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, according to minutes of the Dec. 13 gathering released yesterday. That may boost economic growth by delaying expectations for an increase in the benchmark rate, which has been kept close to zero since December 2008, according to Feroli. At the same time, publishing a range of forecasts risks sowing confusion by showing disagreement among policy makers, Harris said.
“It’s a bit awkward -- you’re going to reveal to the public how much uncertainty the Fed itself has about where it’s going,” Harris said.
Additional Accommodation
The minutes said “a number of members indicated that 60% off moncler jackets current and prospective economic conditions could well warrant additional policy accommodation.” Those members also decided that “any additional actions would be more effective if accompanied by enhanced communication” about the FOMC’s longer- run economic goals and policy framework.
The decision to publish forecasts “is a part of trying to manage expectations,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist in Chicago at Mesirow Financial Inc., which managed $59 billion as of Sept. 30. “The theory is that if households and companies are convinced that the Fed is not going to tighten too quickly, there is reason to invest now.”
Central bankers in August decided to replace their statement that interest rates would stay near zero for an “extended period” with a date of mid-2013. Bernanke said at his Nov. 2 press conference that the statement “says at least mid-2013” and that “clearly it could well be some point beyond that.”
Stocks maintained gains yesterday after the release of the minutes, buoyed by a report showing that manufacturing in the U.S. expanded at the fastest pace in six months in December. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) rose 1.6 percent to 1,277.06 at the close of trading in New York. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note increased to 1.95 percent from 1.88 percent on Dec. 30.
Danger of Confusion Seen
Some Fed officials voiced concerns at last month’s meeting that publishing the forecasts would “confuse the public,” as there is an “appreciable risk that the public could mistakenly interpret participants’ projections of the target federal funds rate as signaling the Committee’s intention to follow a specific policy path rather than as indicating members’ conditional projections,” according to the minutes.
While “most participants viewed these concerns as manageable,” some Fed officials “did not see providing policy projections as a useful step at this time,” the minutes said.
Releasing the forecasts will also demystify officials’ abilities to predict the economy’s path, according to Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.
Risks of Forecasting
“You run the risk of every other forecaster, and that is of making an idiot out of yourself,” McCarthy said.
The increased disclosure may make monetary policy “less flexible” if markets perceive the Fed as committed to a particular path of action, said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York.
“The Fed is no better at forecasting than the best market economists, none of whom are right all the time,” Low said in an e-mailed response to questions. He said he worries that “it will be harder for the FOMC to change direction quickly if it means there is a risk of embarrassment or diminished credibility when they do so.”
Bernanke has made an unprecedented push for Fed openness moncler as chairman. He has aired his views on monetary policy and the financial crisis in television interviews and taken his message on the road in town hall meetings with ordinary citizens in places such as El Paso, Texas.
Press Conferences
In 2011, the 58-year-old former Princeton University professor began holding press conferences four times a year. The FOMC now publishes forecasts for economic growth, inflation and unemployment four times a year, up from twice during the tenure of Bernanke’s predecessor, Alan Greenspan.
Fed officials have also been considering ways to make more explicit the conditions under which the benchmark federal funds rate would remain near zero. Fed Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans has advocated a promise to keep rates low until either unemployment falls below 7 percent or the medium-term inflation outlook rises above 3 percent, while Charles Plosser of Philadelphia has pushed for an inflation target of 2 percent.
Bernanke said Nov. 2 that the central bank may take new steps to boost growth, including changing the way it communicates its policy goals to the public.
“They have developed a potentially powerful easing tool,” and publishing rate forecasts “is a great move,” said Antulio Bomfim, senior managing director at Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in Washington.
“You can’t be against greater transparency,” said Bomfim, cheap moncler a former senior economist at the Fed. “It’s like motherhood and apple pie.”
2011年12月13日星期二
Miami computer salesman Cully Waggoner
Though she admits thumbing her phone while driving is bad habit, giubbotti moncler the University of Missouri student says drivers "are mature enough to understand when it is appropriate and when it is not."
The National Transportation Safety Board disagrees, and it declared Tuesday that texting, emailing or chatting while driving is simply too dangerous to be allowed anywhere in the United States.
The board is urging all states to impose total bans except for emergencies following recent deadly crashes, including one in Missouri after a teenager sent or received 11 text messages within 11 minutes.
The unanimous recommendation from the five-member board would apply even to hands-free devices, a much stricter rule than any current state law.
NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman acknowledged that complying would involve changing what has become ingrained behavior for many Americans.
"We're not here to win a popularity contest," she said. "No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life."
Currently, 35 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, while nine states and Washington, D.C., bar hand-held cellphone use. Thirty states ban all cellphone use for beginning drivers. But enforcement is generally not a high priority, and no states ban the use of hands-free devices for all drivers.
The immediate impetus for the NTSB's recommendation was last year's deadly pileup near Gray Summit, Mo., involving a 19-year-old pickup driver.
The board said the initial collision was caused by the teen's inattention while texting a friend about events of the previous night. The pickup, traveling 55 mph, hit the back of a tractor truck that had slowed for highway construction. The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus, and a second school bus rammed into the back of the first bus.
The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured.
In Missouri, texting is illegal for drivers 21 and under, which means the law would have applied to the 19-year-old. But the ban isn't aggressively enforced, NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said.
"Without the enforcement, the laws don't mean a whole lot," he said.
The law didn't apply to 22-year-old Bishop when she was pulled over Monday night for swerving while texting on the University of Missouri campus.
She blames a late night and schoolwork. The officer who stopped her told her to put her phone in the back seat and sent her home with a warning.
"I definitely have the bad habit of tweeting and driving, texting and driving, and updating my Facebook status," Bishop said. "I probably shouldn't but the technology makes it too easy."
About two out of 10 American drivers overall — and half of drivers between 21 and 24 — say they've thumbed messages or emailed from the driver's seat, according to a survey of more than 6,000 drivers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
At any given moment last year on America's streets and highways,You don't need to go anywhere any more to find cheap Moncler Jackets.Here is your best choice. Our store +provided Moncler jackets are at high quality and low price.The cold winter you will be warm with Moncler jackets.We offer many cheap Moncler jackets such as Moncler men jackets, Moncler jackets for women,kids and so on.You can buy Moncler jackets you like at cheap price within our shop.Wish you have a happy shopping day! nearly one in every 100 car drivers was texting, emailing, surfing the Web or otherwise using a hand-held electronic device, the safety administration said. Those activities were up 50 percent over the previous year.
NTSB investigators said they are seeing increasing texting, cellphone calls and other distracting behavior by drivers in accidents involving all kinds of transportation. It has become routine to immediately request the preservation of cellphone and texting records when an investigation begins.
In the past few years, the board has investigated a train collision in which the engineer was texting that killed 25 people in Chatsworth, Calif., a fatal accident near Philadelphia in which a tugboat pilot was talking on his cellphone and using a laptop computer, and a Northwest Airlines flight that sped more than 100 miles past its destination because both pilots were working on their laptops.
Last year, a driver was dialing his cellphone when his truck crossed a highway median near Munford, Ind., and collided with a 15-passenger van. Eleven people were killed.
While the NTSB doesn't have the power to impose restrictions, its recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators, Congress and state lawmakers. But the board's decision to include hands-free cellphone use in its recommendation is likely to prove especially controversial.
No states currently ban hand-free use, although many studies show that it is often as unsafe as hand-held phone use because drivers' minds are on their conversations rather than what's happening on the road.
Bike messenger Jesus Santa Rosa, 24, says he's seen a lot of accidents that are caused by people using their cellphones while he maneuvers through the streets of downtown Los Angeles.
"I've seen people taking red lights while they're looking down at their cellphones," said Santa Rosa. "And a lot of people get hit — bike messengers, pedestrians."
Santa Rosa says he was sideswiped by a woman who was exiting the freeway and charging onto downtown's surface streets at a high speed.
"This girl, when she stopped after she hit me, she was still talking on the phone as she got out of the car, like, telling someone she almost just killed someone," Santa Rosa said.
Still, he said a ban on hands-free devices would probably be going too far because "texting is more dangerous. They're not looking up."
Another NTSB recommendation Tuesday urges states to aggressively enforce current bans on text messaging and the use of cellphones and other portable electronic devices while driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported earlier this year that pilot projects in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., produced significant reductions in distracted driving by combining stepped-up ticketing with high-profile public education campaigns.
Miami computer salesman Cully Waggoner, 50, agreed that texting is a danger to drivers but said enforcing bans is difficult. What may be more effective is harnessing technology to make technology safer, he said.
Perhaps phone manufacturers can be required to equip phones with a technology that disables texting and data packages if the phone is moving over a certain speed, Waggoner said.
"That would be the only way to get around to fixing anything: Go right to the technology that's being used," Waggoner said. Otherwise, "there's all kinds of laws on the books that people break every day, this would just be another one cheap moncler jackets."
The National Transportation Safety Board disagrees, and it declared Tuesday that texting, emailing or chatting while driving is simply too dangerous to be allowed anywhere in the United States.
The board is urging all states to impose total bans except for emergencies following recent deadly crashes, including one in Missouri after a teenager sent or received 11 text messages within 11 minutes.
The unanimous recommendation from the five-member board would apply even to hands-free devices, a much stricter rule than any current state law.
NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman acknowledged that complying would involve changing what has become ingrained behavior for many Americans.
"We're not here to win a popularity contest," she said. "No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life."
Currently, 35 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, while nine states and Washington, D.C., bar hand-held cellphone use. Thirty states ban all cellphone use for beginning drivers. But enforcement is generally not a high priority, and no states ban the use of hands-free devices for all drivers.
The immediate impetus for the NTSB's recommendation was last year's deadly pileup near Gray Summit, Mo., involving a 19-year-old pickup driver.
The board said the initial collision was caused by the teen's inattention while texting a friend about events of the previous night. The pickup, traveling 55 mph, hit the back of a tractor truck that had slowed for highway construction. The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus, and a second school bus rammed into the back of the first bus.
The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured.
In Missouri, texting is illegal for drivers 21 and under, which means the law would have applied to the 19-year-old. But the ban isn't aggressively enforced, NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said.
"Without the enforcement, the laws don't mean a whole lot," he said.
The law didn't apply to 22-year-old Bishop when she was pulled over Monday night for swerving while texting on the University of Missouri campus.
She blames a late night and schoolwork. The officer who stopped her told her to put her phone in the back seat and sent her home with a warning.
"I definitely have the bad habit of tweeting and driving, texting and driving, and updating my Facebook status," Bishop said. "I probably shouldn't but the technology makes it too easy."
About two out of 10 American drivers overall — and half of drivers between 21 and 24 — say they've thumbed messages or emailed from the driver's seat, according to a survey of more than 6,000 drivers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
At any given moment last year on America's streets and highways,You don't need to go anywhere any more to find cheap Moncler Jackets.Here is your best choice. Our store +provided Moncler jackets are at high quality and low price.The cold winter you will be warm with Moncler jackets.We offer many cheap Moncler jackets such as Moncler men jackets, Moncler jackets for women,kids and so on.You can buy Moncler jackets you like at cheap price within our shop.Wish you have a happy shopping day! nearly one in every 100 car drivers was texting, emailing, surfing the Web or otherwise using a hand-held electronic device, the safety administration said. Those activities were up 50 percent over the previous year.
NTSB investigators said they are seeing increasing texting, cellphone calls and other distracting behavior by drivers in accidents involving all kinds of transportation. It has become routine to immediately request the preservation of cellphone and texting records when an investigation begins.
In the past few years, the board has investigated a train collision in which the engineer was texting that killed 25 people in Chatsworth, Calif., a fatal accident near Philadelphia in which a tugboat pilot was talking on his cellphone and using a laptop computer, and a Northwest Airlines flight that sped more than 100 miles past its destination because both pilots were working on their laptops.
Last year, a driver was dialing his cellphone when his truck crossed a highway median near Munford, Ind., and collided with a 15-passenger van. Eleven people were killed.
While the NTSB doesn't have the power to impose restrictions, its recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators, Congress and state lawmakers. But the board's decision to include hands-free cellphone use in its recommendation is likely to prove especially controversial.
No states currently ban hand-free use, although many studies show that it is often as unsafe as hand-held phone use because drivers' minds are on their conversations rather than what's happening on the road.
Bike messenger Jesus Santa Rosa, 24, says he's seen a lot of accidents that are caused by people using their cellphones while he maneuvers through the streets of downtown Los Angeles.
"I've seen people taking red lights while they're looking down at their cellphones," said Santa Rosa. "And a lot of people get hit — bike messengers, pedestrians."
Santa Rosa says he was sideswiped by a woman who was exiting the freeway and charging onto downtown's surface streets at a high speed.
"This girl, when she stopped after she hit me, she was still talking on the phone as she got out of the car, like, telling someone she almost just killed someone," Santa Rosa said.
Still, he said a ban on hands-free devices would probably be going too far because "texting is more dangerous. They're not looking up."
Another NTSB recommendation Tuesday urges states to aggressively enforce current bans on text messaging and the use of cellphones and other portable electronic devices while driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported earlier this year that pilot projects in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., produced significant reductions in distracted driving by combining stepped-up ticketing with high-profile public education campaigns.
Miami computer salesman Cully Waggoner, 50, agreed that texting is a danger to drivers but said enforcing bans is difficult. What may be more effective is harnessing technology to make technology safer, he said.
Perhaps phone manufacturers can be required to equip phones with a technology that disables texting and data packages if the phone is moving over a certain speed, Waggoner said.
"That would be the only way to get around to fixing anything: Go right to the technology that's being used," Waggoner said. Otherwise, "there's all kinds of laws on the books that people break every day, this would just be another one cheap moncler jackets."
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