Full text of Federal Open Market Committee Meeting Minutes, Transcripts, and Other Documents : Meeting, August 22, 2000 : Transcript

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Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee
August 22, 2000

A meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was held in the offices of the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, August 22, 2000, at
9:00 a.m.
PRESENT: Mr. Greenspan, Chairman
Mr. McDonough, Vice Chairman
Mr. Broaddus
Mr. Ferguson
Mr. Gramlich
Mr. Guynn
Mr. Jordan
Mr. Kelley
Mr. Meyer
Mr. Parry
Mr. Hoenig, Ms. Minehan, Messrs. Moskow and Poole, Alternate
Members of the Federal Open Market Committee
Messrs. McTeer, Santomero, and Stern, Presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks
of Dallas, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis respectively
Mr. Kohn, Secretary and Economist
Mr. Bernard, Deputy Secretary
Ms. Fox, Assistant Secretary
Mr. Mattingly, General Counsel
Ms. Johnson, Economist
Mr. Stockton, Economist
Mr. Beebe, Ms. Cumming, Messrs. Goodfriend, Howard, Lindsey, Reinhart,
Simpson, and Sniderman, Associate Economists
Mr. Fisher, Manager, System Open Market Account
Messrs. Madigan and Slifman, Associate Directors, Divisions of
Monetary Affairs and Research and Statistics respectively,
Board of Governors

2
Mr. Whitesell, Assistant Director, Division of Monetary Affairs, Board of
Governors
Mr. Reifschneider, Section Chief, Division of Research and Statistics,
Board of Governors
Ms. Low, Open Market Secretariat Assistant, Division of Monetary
Affairs, Board of Governors
Mr. Kumasaka, Assistant Economist, Division of Monetary Affairs,
Board of Governors
Mr. Connolly, First Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Ms. Browne, Mr. Hakkio, Ms. Krieger, Messrs. Lang, Rasche, Rolnick, and
Rosenblum, Senior Vice Presidents, Federal Reserve Banks of Boston,
Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Dallas
respectively
Mr. Sullivan, Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Mr. Tallman, Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

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Transcript of Federal Open Market Committee Meeting of
August 22, 2000

CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. At the outset I want to welcome Tony Santomero from
Philadelphia to his first meeting. I assume that you have been given the various paraphernalia you
will need, including a Fedspeak dictionary? [Laughter] Our first presentation is usually
indecipherable even with the dictionary! I call on Peter Fisher. [Laughter]
MR. FISHER. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [Laughter]
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. That was meant as a compliment!
MR. FISHER. At least I’m worthy of note. I’ll be referring to the usual package of
indecipherable charts, which have been relabeled specially, in accordance with your wishes, Mr.
Chairman.1
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Thank you very much.
MR. FISHER. The top panel on the first page depicts forward and
current deposit rates. Since your last meeting, both the current and the
3-month forward deposit rates have declined. And the current 3-month
LIBOR rate is about 10 basis points lower than at the time of your last
meeting. Moreover, the 3-month, 6-month, and 9-month forward 3-month
deposit rates are all more or less right on top of each other, yielding 6.8
percent. If one assumes the existence of some term premium, the fact that
the 9-month forward rate is about the same as the 3-month forward rate
implies that something funny is going on, or at least that the market may be
expecting an easing or is filled with uncertainties. I think it’s very hard to
sort out whether this is one of those cases where uncertainties about the
state of macroeconomic conditions and fiscal and monetary policy in the
first quarter of next year are leading the market to price interest rates for
differing maturities in a glob together. But implicitly, it looks as if the
market is pricing in an easing in the further-out contracts.
Looking at the euro area, euro current and forward rates have risen
since your last meeting. It is noteworthy that this is the first time in the
1

A copy of the charts used by Mr. Fisher is appended to this transcript. (Appendix 1)

4
euro’s history that those rates have moved in an opposite trend from our
forward rates for an extended period of time. Recent ECB musings and
their bulletin about inflation risks pushed the rates up most recently.
In the bottom panel on the page, you can see that the Bank of Japan
finally did it--raising their rates, as everyone knows, on the 11th of August.
I think it is worth going back over some ground here. Forward rates and
current deposit rates in Japan backed up in late June as they have every
year for the last several years, as all the contracts start to incorporate
forward period-end dates--the fiscal half-year ending in September, the
calendar year-end in December, and the fiscal year-end in March. And that
elevated all the deposit rates as it has very consistently for the last several
years. They remained elevated into early July, as the market began to
anticipate a Bank of Japan move at its July meeting. Then with the Sogo
bankruptcy just a few days before that July 17th meeting, the rates came off
as the market concluded the BOJ wouldn’t be moving in the event. Indeed,
the decision was for no change in rates. Then rates began to price up in
anticipation of the meeting on August 11th when in fact the BOJ did raise
rates. One point worth noting is how much steeper the rise in the current
3-month deposit rate was than the anticipation. I think that reflects the fact
that Tokyo bankers have for the first time in a decade had to deal with an
increase in rates and how to price deposits in such an environment.
Turning to the next page, I thought I’d briefly discuss the plight of the
euro. The top panel shows the 10-year and 2-year dollar and euro swap
rates and the middle panel depicts the differential between those rates--the
2-year and the 10-year dollar/euro differentials. And in the bottom panel I
have plotted the euro exchange rates against both the dollar and the yen.
Since the start of May, the 2-year differential has narrowed almost 100
basis points, approximately half due to our rates coming down and half to
theirs going up. The 10-year differential has narrowed almost entirely as a
consequence of our rate coming down, with only a very little uptick in their
10-year rate. While the initial narrowing of these differentials coincided
with the euro’s brief rally off historic lows in May, at first appearance the
more recent narrowing in interest rate differentials seems to have done little
for the euro. The euro has drifted back down to its springtime lows and
was trading below 90 again this morning. I think a better interpretation,
looking back, is that in all likelihood the euro would have been a great deal
weaker had these interest rate differentials not narrowed as they did.
Forecasts for euro-area growth have been revised up to around, and in
some cases even above, 3-1/2 percent, while forecasts of U.S. growth have
tended to be revised down toward that neighborhood, just north of 3-1/2
percent. Many market participants, myself included, had long expected
that a convergence of anticipated growth rates and the erasing of a growth

5
differential would be the signal for a strengthening of the euro. But that
has not been the case. I think European business confidence continues to
express itself in a quest for outward investment, particularly into North
America. And the capital markets in general have been mesmerized by the
graceful moderation of growth in the United States and the continued
productivity gains, both of which for the time being are reflected in the
strength of the dollar.
On the next page, I have depicted the four domestic yield curves that I
show you from time-to-time--those for U.S. Treasuries, interest rate swaps,
Fannie Mae, and the Ford Motor Company--on three selected dates. In
green is the yield curve in July of last year, in blue the curve on the day
after your February meeting, and in red the most recent reading as of last
Friday. Most are noticeably lower than they were in early February of this
year. The one exception is Ford Motor Company’s yield curve, which is
almost identical to where it was in February. But I think it’s important to
note that that is not only fairly typical of corporate yields but also probably
reflects the strength of issuance we’ve had over the last few months. So
that outlier is more likely indicative of a supply effect than a market-driven
expectation for interest rates.
Turning to page 4, I thought I’d briefly go over the impact of the
announcement we made in July of the changes in our operations with
respect to outright purchases. We announced on July 5th that we would
tend to concentrate more on outright purchases for the System Open
Market Account at the short end of the yield curve and lean more toward
purchasing off-the-run issues and limiting our participation in the primary
market. The top panel shows the eurodollar futures strip for September and
December 2000 and for March 2001 as background, in terms of policy and
macroeconomic expectations. The middle panel depicts 2-year and 10-year
Treasury yields, which you can see follow a more or less consistent pattern.
From the time of our announcement on July 5th, 2-year yields did
outperform 10-year yields very marginally until the auction of the new
10-year issue on August 9th, when the relationship began to reverse. But
this behavior is really consistent with the economic data the market was
seeing and with our announcement that we would be buying more in the
short end. Those factors may have given a slight boost to the short end of
the yield curve, but it’s very hard to parse that out from the policy impact.
The short end was rallying across the curve, as you can see in the top panel.
In the bottom panel, I’ve depicted one measure of the differential
between on-the-run and off-the-run yields in the Treasury market. Here it
is a little easier to see that our announcement had an impact. After July 5th
you can see a narrowing of these spreads. There is a lot of noise in this

6
series, especially as we come up to the new auction where the cycle will
change and a new 10-year issue will come into the market. But we did
seem to have an impact, as we expected. We hoped to avoid having much
of an impact on the shape of the yield curve, and I think we succeeded, but
our announcement did seem to affect the off-the-run spreads.
Turning to page 5, let me go over our operations since the last
meeting. At the time of your July meeting our reserve needs were
projected to grow as a consequence of economic factors by a little over $8
billion in the intermeeting period, as indicated in the first column of
numbers. We expected to redeem about $15 billion net of Treasury
securities, so that was going to add to our reserve needs. And then, given
our forecast of a slight decline in total nonborrowed Fed balances, we
thought we’d have to do about $22 to $23 billion in combined repo and
outright operations.
The next column depicts where we were in fact through yesterday.
The autonomous factors drained fewer reserves than we anticipated. Most
of the $6.2 billion differential between our forecast and the actual was a
result of less demand for currency than we expected. Our redemptions
were somewhat lower at $12 billion, not $15 billion. The Treasury upped
the size of its bill offerings a bit and that reduced how much we were going
to redeem under our 35 percent limit. Thus we had less of a need to add
reserves than we had expected, $14 billion rather than $22 billion.
Looking forward to the next intermeeting period through early
October, we are expecting autonomous factors to drain about $4-1/2
billion, SOMA redemptions to be about $5-1/2 billion, and our need from
September 6th forward to grow by about $9 billion.
On the next page in the top table, the numbers in the left-hand column
are the ones I showed you last time, indicating that we purchased about
$12.8 billion in outright securities from January through June. So, in the
first half of the year we purchased a little over $12-3/4 billion. Just in the
past intermeeting period we purchased $12-1/2 billion--rather aggressive
on our part. But under our new guidelines we thought that was manageable
and we did that. In the table below you can see that the average level of
repos outstanding, with the shift in reserve needs less steep than we
expected, has declined to about $11.5 billion, in contrast to $16.5 billion in
the period ending June 28th.
Looking forward, I don’t think we’ll try to buy another $12 billion in
Treasury securities between now and your next meeting. But in all
likelihood we will try to purchase something on the order of $10 billion by
your November meeting, probably doing $5 billion between now and the

7
next meeting and $5 billion from that point to November. Obviously, as
I’m going through this, if members of the Committee have opinions on the
appropriate pace of this activity, I would like to hear your views.
Finally, I might just note a couple of other points, Mr. Chairman. At
the last meeting I mentioned that the Treasury was very seriously
considering changing the bidding rules for foreign central banks to curtail
their ability to bid noncompetitively because of the uncertainty that
preferential bidding procedure gives the Treasury in managing its cash
balance. As I said at the time, this is overwhelmingly an issue of managing
relations with the
The Treasury did not announce that change in early August, as
original ly planned, in part to ensure that our Japanese colleagues
understood what was likely to transpire and were comfortable with the way
we could work with them on this. This is a matter of some considerable
sensitivity. The market has become aware of the fact that if the current
bidding procedures for the foreign central banks continue, by the middle of
next year that will overwhelmingly dominate the market. The market has
realized that something has to give. I don’t think there have been any leaks
on this matter.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. There will be no market if everyone is willing to accept
the market price but nobody has a transaction.
MR. FISHER. That’s right, Mr. Chairman. So the market is waking
up to this situation. It isn’t really an issue of the 10-year fiscal forecast. It
is a matter of the maturity schedule over the next two years. There is likely
to be a noticeable decline in issuance about a year from now, as the amount
the Treasury has to roll over declines sharply. The Treasury and we at the
New York Bank are trying to work with both
to ascertain their comfort level with this change and
our announcement of it. The question is whether to announce this in
September or to wait a little longer and work a little harder in our
discussions with the
. That is something the Treasury will be
deciding in the next couple of weeks.
Mr. Chairman, the funds rate has behaved quite well over the
intermeeting period, so I’m not even going to report on that. We had no
foreign exchange intervention operations to report. I will need the
Committee’s ratification of our domestic operations. Also, I have sent the
Committee a memorandum on changes I’d like to make in coordination
with the Treasury on the investment of the System’s euro reserves and I’m
hoping the Committee will concur that this is a prudent thing to do. I’d be
happy to answer any questions.

8
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I think the Treasury’s debt to the public is down to $3.4
trillion minus our holdings of $1/2 trillion or so. And a very large chunk of the remainder is held by
official parties abroad. Do we have any very recent evidence on whether they are paring their
holdings as the Treasury liquidates its debt or are contemplating doing so? In other words, in your
discussions--or the presumed discussions that you are going to be having with the Japanese and
others on the issue of bidding--are you expecting to get any sense from them that they are going to
be paring their holdings of U.S Treasury securities? Or are we going to find that as the supply of
Treasury issues declines, the value of them, at least to many of the central banks, will rise? It is even
conceivable that they would bid higher and absorb a goodly part of the private floating supply. Do
you have any indication yet of what is going on in that area?
MR. FISHER. Yes, in discussions with my central bank counterparts in other countries it
is clear that a great deal is going on in that area. Let me try to distinguish a couple of classes of
central banks. There are some central banks that have rather sophisticated foreign currency reserve
management programs. I mean that in a complimentary way, not a disparaging way. They have
thought very hard about how they want their portfolio structured and have diversified out of a simple
portfolio of Treasury holdings. In that category the

comes to mind; they really

are rather distraught at the idea of a shrinking supply of Treasury securities because they already
have achieved their diversification out of Treasuries in a way they view as optimal. So that’s one
case where there is some concern about the shrinking supply; they don’t want to be responsible for
chasing Treasuries that are lower and lower in yield. But they feel a need to do that as it suits their
portfolio.
Another category of central banks involves ones that are sophisticated but more
aggressive. I mean that in a slightly less complimentary way. They are trying to generate as much

9
yield as they can, rather aggressively. They’ve diversified out of Treasury holdings pretty
effectively. And they will look at this as a very opportunity-driven situation and probably will shift
as yields change. I think of

as the sine qua non of this group.

which they want to leave in Treasuries. They
don’t want to change that strategy. I have some grave concerns, as do my colleagues at the
Treasury, that

left to their own devices, would bid to hit in every auction in which they

feel a need to participate. They could push yields lower very fast if they took a rather mechanistic
attitude. We’ve done some analysis, which I’ve shared with staff here at the Board and the Treasury,
and have concluded that at least over the course of next year, 2001, we could work with
authorities and perhaps get them to diversify their holdings. What we are thinking about is
essentially 10 percent of their holdings across the entire spectrum out to 10 years, their current
maturity ceiling. They haven’t gone beyond that. Their current holdings are very lumpy. In some
issues next year they could well bump up against the 35 percent legal limit the Treasury puts on any
one bidder. You can imagine what would happen in a Treasury auction where 35 percent of the total
was being bid on with the bidder wanting the certainty that all its needs would be filled. That could
really move yields around quite a bit.
So, at a very mechanical level, that’s what we’re trying to work out with the
We are trying to work with them with the objective of buying them another year of time in
which we could help them stay in the asset class of U.S. Treasuries, but diversify themselves more
evenly across all the available issues outstanding. That would buy them some time before they even
need to think about diversifying into other asset classes. But undoubtedly, there are other central

10
banks with smaller holdings than

, which may be in the same

behavioral pattern as the Ministry, as you suggest.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Is there any chance that they would really stonewall and
just continue to do what they are doing?
MR. FISHER. Yes, there is always some chance of that. But I believe
has very good relations with

and we’re hopeful that the officials

from both countries will be able to talk this through. I think the more junior people in
understand the complexity of this, and on that side of the house I’m
quite confident that there is no animosity among the

The staff people

on both sides have worked together for a long time in managing these assets. I don’t think the
problem in

is stonewalling but inertia. The

does not move quickly in

the best of circumstances. There may be some skepticism about our fiscal forecasts. Is it all pie in
the sky? And why do they really have to bother with this? And there is a question of the
sophistication and interest on the part of the

to deal with this kind of change.

It’s a daunting prospect.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. It is. It’s sad in a sense.
MR. FERGUSON. Peter, with respect to diversification of these holdings overseas, have
you seen foreign governments or foreign central banks moving more aggressively into GSEs or have
they been moving out of GSEs? I know some of them do hold GSEs. Do you know how they have
been dealing with those holdings?
MR. FISHER. Yes, there may have been something of a rotation there--we have custody
of their holdings of GSEs--but it’s been pretty stable. It has not really been changing much in total.
Some may have been driven to them and others were dissuaded from thinking of holding them as the

11
single answer to the problem by some of the statements about GSEs of the Chairman and the
Secretary of the Treasury over the last eight months. But it’s a very delicate balance. They want to
put their funds somewhere in our markets. And I believe they will take a more cautious attitude as to
the amount of their exposure in GSEs. But many of them are not in a position to avoid that asset
class. It simply is not something that makes sense for a large holder of fixed income products. But I
don’t think their GSE holdings are growing very rapidly at present.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Poole.
MR. POOLE. I don’t understand why the U.S. Treasury should be unhappy if the
are willing to hold U.S. Treasuries at 2 percent or some unusually low yield. It would
seem to me that if the market understands why this has come about, it won’t cause any trouble. It
would just benefit the U.S. taxpayers.
MR. FISHER. Obviously, it’s not the level of the yield, which would be a saving for U.S.
taxpayers. It’s the lumpiness of the

In one five-year auction they might take

down 35 percent of the offering and in the next one they wouldn’t participate. And we don’t really
have any way for the market to get a transparent sense of what the

are going to bid for. We

have put details about the composition of our portfolio on line, with weekly updates. I’m not
expecting the

to do the same in the near term. So it’s mostly a question of the

disproportionate size of their holdings of individual issues and the fact that aggressive behavior by
them would have a volatile effect on our auction outcomes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. And yields.
MR. FISHER. And, therefore, market yields.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Which in turn is likely to have a negative effect on the
propensity of foreigners’ willingness to hold U.S. Treasuries.

12
MR. FISHER. Yes, absolutely. The feedback effect of making the market more volatile,
more quickly is a concern.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Broaddus.
MR. BROADDUS. Peter, with respect to the foreign exchange proposal in your memo, is
this going to be announced publicly or to the markets in some way?
MR. FISHER. Yes, in due course. It would need to come out in the quarterly report on
our foreign exchange activities that we produce jointly with the Treasury. The announcement effect
is something that I think the Treasury in particular needs to be sensitive to in terms of our relations
with other ministries of finance as issuers of debt. So the language I used in that last paragraph
about public announcement has the type of wording that we have been discussing with the Treasury
for inserting in the quarterly report. My basic posture would be that if the Treasury thinks it
important to preannounce it in some way, I’d leave that to them.
MR. BROADDUS. I think it’s fine to do this, as we discussed earlier, as a housekeeping
item. But it occurs to me, given the condition of the euro, that this could be seen by at least some
people in the markets as a signal that we may be more inclined and more willing to intervene in
foreign exchange markets than we have been in recent years. I would hope, however it comes out,
that we would be sensitive to that possible interpretation and not do anything to reinforce it.
MR. FISHER. Yes, we certainly don’t want people to think that how we invest our
reserves has anything to do with our intervention appetite. And we will try to make sure that,
however announced, it is communicated as “good housekeeping” in our investments.
MR. BROADDUS. I had to get that on the record!
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Vice Chair.

13
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Mr. Chairman, I have more of a comment than a
question. It seems to me that a country that has a current account deficit of more than 4 percent of
GDP has to be very concerned about anything that would affect foreign views about investing in that
country, as your comment a moment ago suggests. I think the likelihood of our being able to lead
the

to understand what we want them to do and have all those

conversations be tranquil and pleasant is quite low. I believe we have to be very sensitive to the fact
that Peter and those at the Under Secretary level at the Treasury have to have an ongoing amicable
relationship with their

This may be a case where some of the heavy hitting

has to be done by people with fancy titles who will have to take on a more aggressive, but I hope
pleasant, posture in getting

to do what we want them to do. As your comment suggests,

if we have a U.S. Treasury market that is seriously disturbed, it could have a significant negative
effect on foreigners’ views of whether they want to invest in a broader range of U.S. assets. Until
we get our current account deficit reduced--if in fact we do--that is an outcome we simply can’t
afford.
MR. FISHER. Let me just add to that point, in light of President Poole’s comment. The
Treasury is motivated here by the cash management nuisance. They just don’t want to end up with
more cash than they need, which is a result the foreign add-on procedure has produced several times
in the last six months. That’s also a nightmare for us. If the Treasury is routinely ending up with
much more cash than they anticipate, it makes it harder for us to manage reserves. So we share the
Treasury’s objective. And they are trying to make clear to the

that that is their

motive--it’s a mechanical issue that is driving the need to change these bidding rules. That is how
we’re trying to present our position. Our posture is that I am then giving them advice, as a manager
of reserves, regarding how we have gone about participating in

and Treasury bill

14
auctions

to avoid disturbing the market. We don’t bid to hit. We try to put in a reasonable

set of bids, and then if our needs are not filled at auction, we buy in the secondary market. We don’t
want to have an outsized impact on their markets. So we’re trying to couch the conversation in
terms of collegial advice about managing reserves, given the sensitivities Bill Poole has alluded to.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Further questions on this subject?
MR. JORDAN. Does this include the topic of the euro diversification?
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. No, we haven’t gotten there yet. But if there are no further
questions, we can now turn to that subject.
As you know and as Peter mentioned, he has circulated a memorandum on the issue of
diversifying foreign reserves out of German euro-denominated instruments into other eurodenominated instruments. I assume that this issue, which was discussed previously, is of interest to
us. President Jordan, I believe you want to make a comment with respect to that?
MR. JORDAN. Yes, first a question, though you may want to treat it as rhetorical when I
get to it. What is the current dollar equivalent value, roughly, of both the Fed and Treasury holdings
of yen and euro-denominated assets?
MR. FISHER. I should have that number right in front of me somewhere, but I’d say it’s
about $30+ billion at current market values.
MR. JORDAN. The combined total of our holdings and the Treasury’s of both yen and
euro-denominated assets?
MR. FISHER. When the dollar is very strong, as it has been, the value of those foreign
currency holdings goes down. That is a factual matter. I’m sorry I don’t have the precise number.
MR. JORDAN. The number that stuck in my mind from a couple years ago was $40-$45
billion, so if the exchange translations reduced that, that’s great. Is that the right amount to have?

15
MR. FISHER. I have no idea what the right amount of foreign currency reserve holdings
is for the U.S. monetary authorities.
MR. JORDAN. Well, that was the rhetorical part of the question. [Laughter]
MR. FISHER. I thought it might be.
MR. JORDAN. We got to this situation where we hold assets that are claims on foreign
taxpayers by way of historical accident in a sense. We somehow got here. And then, especially if
Al Broaddus keeps prevailing, we won’t intervene, which means that we don’t add to that but we
also don’t reduce it except for exchange translation effects. There must be a point where we should
step back and look fundamentally at what it is we are doing when we are holding claims on foreign
taxpayers as opposed to claims on our own taxpayers. Or, if the Treasury situation were to continue
as the baseline forecast suggests, claims on some other earning streams. When a central bank holds
the obligations of its own federal taxpayers, as we do for the most part in our portfolio, it has
monetized that debt in the important sense that those paying the interest on the debt--the taxpayers-are the same people who are benefiting from those payments. That’s only true in the case of federal
debt and federal taxpayers. It wouldn’t be true if we were holding agency issues or state and local
government issues or foreign government obligations. To have a strategy that says we’re going to
hold claims on the Japanese taxpayers or the German taxpayers or the French taxpayers is something
that I think needs to be addressed fundamentally. Why are we holding those and how much should
we hold? When we hold debt claims on our own taxpayers, they get the benefit from the
monetization of that debt. In the alternative of holding foreign assets, again holding aside what’s
going on with the exchange rates and resulting translation, there is a cost imposed on our taxpayers if
the yield on the claims of foreign taxpayers--Japanese yen debt or euro-denominated debt--is below
the yield on U.S. government debt. So if there’s a cost, there’s presumably a benefit. And since we

16
--we, the Federal Reserve plus the Treasury--by our actions or behavior are imposing a cost on our
taxpayers, we should think through what the benefits are on the other side and try to keep those in
balance. I would think in principle that the answer to the question of what is the right amount
involves asking to achieve what end? What are the costs and benefits of holding any foreign
currency reserves? I have a hard time getting myself back to the point where it makes sense for our
country, maybe uniquely in the world, to hold any official assets that are claims on foreign
taxpayers.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. There is a history to this, as you know. Clearly, if the
general policy of the United States government were never to intervene in the exchange markets,
then the optimum amount of foreign exchange reserves would be zero. The trouble with that,
because the Treasury has the presumed ultimate authority to determine our international financial
policy, is that Treasuries change from one administration to the next and policies within any
particular administration change. So it’s very difficult to get a formalized policy directed precisely
at the question of the cost-benefit analysis of what our reserve position should be. It was a moot
issue for a long period of time because, as the dollar deteriorated through most of the period when
we had reserves, we were engendering capital gains and nobody cared. And if our official forecast,
at least as embodied in the Greenbook materializes, we will generate capital gains again. And one
can argue that it may be desirable to do that. But I think the truth of the matter, as you correctly
point out, is that every time we’ve endeavored to come at this issue in a formalized policy-oriented
manner, we have failed largely because it is not the Federal Reserve that has the ultimate authority to
make that judgment. My impression basically is that it has become an issue that nobody wishes to
confront. And I guess that’s really underscored by the fact that none of us knows exactly how much
we have in the way of reserves, whereas 5 or 10 years ago I could tell you how much we had within

17
25 francs--Swiss francs, that is--when we used to hold them. But I would gather that if the dollar
continues to strengthen and if the losses we publish, which are true or real losses, rise substantially,
Congress is going to start to react. It hasn’t. I haven’t received a single note, question, or anything
of that sort in any of my contacts with the Congress. And to my knowledge neither has the Treasury.
But that doesn’t answer your question. Maybe the thing to do--not now because we’re approaching
a potential change in administrations--is to have that issue be one of the early items on the agenda
for discussion with the next administration.
MR. JORDAN. I would suggest as we all think about this--and we can’t avoid thinking
about it because of surpluses as far as the eye can see, so to speak--that we look back to the earlier
practice of exchanges of foreign assets with our foreign counterparts. I know it’s the Treasury’s call,
really. But if it were to turn out that central banks in other countries chose to reduce their holdings
of U.S. government obligations, I think we should at least be open to opportunities to do an off
market swap or exchange of currencies.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. We can do that now without reference to any particular
federal surplus or deficit. Well, I grant you that if the Treasury were going to do it specifically, it
would-MR. JORDAN. It would get to the question of the composition of our portfolio, what we
have in, say, euro-denominated assets versus something else, because some things might have to
happen. Say we wind up only owning claims on German and French taxpayers but not on Japanese-and I think right now why we hold so many claims on the Japanese taxpayers is an interesting
question. But if, say, an island off the coast of mainland China decided it wanted to reduce its
holdings of U.S. assets, depending on what it wanted to hold instead, then an off-market exchange
might be appropriate.

18
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. You are talking about Quemoy? [Laughter]
MR. JORDAN. That, too! I’m suggesting that we be open to facilitating--not
intervening, I know--in such a case by engaging in an off market transaction that would result in a
reduction of our holdings of assets denominated in foreign currencies in exchange for taking their
holdings of U.S. government obligations into our portfolio. I wouldn’t want us to preclude the idea
that those types of transactions could be done.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I think that issue really ought to be on the agenda for one of
our early Treasury lunches with the new administration. We bring it up every once in a while with
the hopes that they will rationalize their policy. And we might as well keep trying. Are there any
further questions with respect to the euro diversification issue that’s reflected in Peter’s memo? I
hear no objection, so I assume that you could proceed with that. We need a vote on domestic
operations.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Move approval of the domestic operations.
MR. PARRY. Second.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Without objection. Also, in my enthusiasm to welcome our
new member, I forgot to ask for a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting and I do so
now. Would somebody like to move approval?
SPEAKER(?). So move.
SEVERAL(?). Move approval.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Without objection. Let’s now move on to the staff
briefings and the Committee discussion. I call on Dave Stockton and Karen Johnson.
MR. STOCKTON. In putting together this forecast, we had to address
two central questions: First, is the economy really slowing? And second,
how much does it need to slow in order to prevent inflation pressures from

19
building? To jump right to the bottom line, our answer to the first question
is, yes. And our answer to the second question is, not by as much as we
previously thought.
Let me turn first to the question of the extent of the slowing in
economic growth in recent months. At the time of the last forecast, there
were only tentative signs of the deceleration in activity that we were
projecting. Since then, the evidence of slowing has accumulated. Indeed, if
anything, we have been surprised more often than not on the down side. It
still would be premature to declare with confidence that a durable step down
in the growth of output has arrived, but the odds of that event are looking
considerably higher than they were a couple of months ago.
For one, the job market appears to have cooled noticeably since last
winter. To be sure, some of the slowing of private payroll employment
growth probably just reflected a shift in the seasonal timing of hiring
induced by warm winter weather and strong overall activity. And, no doubt,
there have been more than a few instances in which hiring has been held
back by a lack of qualified workers. But given the breadth of the slowdown
and the absence of any apparent upward pressure on the workweek that
might be expected to accompany widespread worker shortages, we believe
that a slowing in labor demand has been the more important factor
underlying the recent drop-off in the pace of hiring.
On the spending side, tighter monetary policy appears to be leaving its
clearest mark on housing activity. Starts of single-family homes have
trended down since the beginning of the year, and the permits data give us
little reason to discount this decline. Combined with a drop-off in sales of
new homes and weaker prices and production of construction materials and
supplies, the data paint a reasonably consistent picture of softer demand in
this sector.
Much the same can be said for motor vehicles. After the astounding
pace registered earlier this year, car and truck sales have slowed
considerably--albeit to merely a very strong pace--and inventory overhangs
have developed for a few models. At present, the automakers are dealing
with these spotty problems by raising incentives and moving quickly to trim
production where necessary. Indeed, a drop in assemblies contributes
importantly to our projected second-half deceleration of real GDP.
Outside of the auto sector, real PCE slowed sharply in the second
quarter, and, although we are forecasting a larger gain in the current quarter,
the projected increase in spending remains well below that seen late last
year and early this year. But here I’d have to admit that, with consumer
confidence remaining elevated and with only one month of data in hand, this

20
key element in our outlook remains more forecast than fact. Given our view
that the impetus to spending from wealth should be waning after about 8
months of relatively flat equity prices, we are comfortable with the
underpinnings of our consumption forecast. But the more subdued pace of
spending that we are projecting is far from baked in the cake.
In contrast to the signs of slowing in household spending, business
outlays for capital equipment have continued to surge ahead. One of the
most notable aspects of the recent annual revision to the national accounts
was that the investment boom of recent years is now estimated to have been
even stronger than previously thought. Moreover, there are few signs, if any,
that higher real long-term interest rates have put an appreciable dent in the
demand for equipment and software. It just doesn’t look like this boom is
about to dissipate any time soon.
This brings me to the second question: Does the economy need to
slow? We still think the 6 percent pace of the past four quarters is not
sustainable. But because of our supply-side revisions, that pace is not as far
above potential growth as before. With the revised data showing a higher
level of investment and with the near-term indicators pointing to continued
strong growth in capital outlays going forward, we found ourselves
forecasting an economy in which the growth of capital services will be high
and increasing. Moreover, the annual revisions portray a pattern of greater
acceleration of actual labor productivity, with the annual increase through
the second quarter of this year in excess of 5 percent. There are a number of
reasons for discounting the extent of the recent pickup in the nonfarm
business figures, but any way we look at it, the performance of productivity
has been phenomenal.
Taken together, these observations motivated our upward revisions to
the growth of structural productivity and potential output. Indeed, given
both the mounting contribution from capital deepening implied by our
investment forecast and some further improvement in the growth of
multifactor productivity, we are projecting a modest ongoing acceleration of
structural productivity--3-1/2 percent this year and 3-3/4 percent in 2001, up
about 1/2 percentage point from our last forecast.
The revision to structural productivity not only affects potential GDP,
it also has important implications for the demand side of our forecast. In
particular, it boosts the growth of real incomes and spending and is the chief
reason that we have adjusted up our real GDP growth forecast by a half
percentage point in 2001 to 4 percent.
This outcome might seem somewhat surprising in light of many of the
simulations we have shown you in recent years. In those simulations, faster

21
trend productivity growth typically caused growth in demand to outstrip that
of the productivity-enhanced growth of supply, at least for a time. As you
will recall, an important channel for that effect came through the influence
of faster productivity growth on asset values and, consequently, on
consumption and investment. But our interpretation of recent events is that
while we hapless economists have been only slowly marking up our
forecasts for productivity growth, the markets and private-sector agents had
already been anticipating this improvement. Thus, we are not looking for
any additional increment to spending from a further productivity-driven rise
in the stock market.
On net, our revisions to the demand and supply sides of the forecast
were nearly a wash for resource utilization. In this projection, we anticipate
the unemployment rate to rise to about 4-1/4 percent by the end of next year,
just a bit above our June forecast. By our assessment, this remains too low
to prevent a further gradual deterioration in inflation. For this reason, our
forecast assumes some further tightening of monetary policy next year, as
core inflation drifts higher.
Of course, major question marks continue to surround this element of
our forecast. But we read the incoming wage data as suggesting that labor
markets remain extremely tight. Virtually all of the data on hourly
compensation have come in to the high side of our June forecast--decidedly
so in the case of the ECI, which outstripped our second-quarter forecast by
nearly a percentage point at an annual rate. Although we have carried only a
bit of that surprise forward in our projection, we expect to see continued
upward pressures on compensation.
That said, these upward innovations to our wage forecast have been
more than offset by our faster estimated structural productivity growth,
which has acted to damp the rise in unit labor costs. As a result, the uptrend
in price inflation is more gradual than we were previously projecting. We
now anticipate that core PCE price inflation will move above 2 percent by
the end of next year, a couple of tenths below our previous forecast, though
still nearly ½ percentage point higher than its current pace.
Obviously, a wide range of uncertainty attaches to many important
elements of our forecast. But the changes that we have made to this
projection bring into sharper focus the risks associated with our investment
forecast. We are projecting some slowing in equipment spending from its
recent pace in response to rising interest rates and some deceleration of final
sales and profits. If the slower growth of earnings that we are expecting to
accompany a period of below trend economic growth came as a significant
disappointment to businesses, there could be a sharper retrenchment in
capital spending than we are forecasting.

22

The largest and most immediate effect of that retrenchment would
come on the demand side of the economy, especially as multiplieraccelerator effects amplified any slowing of capital spending. Reduced
investment would also attenuate the productivity-enhancing effects of
capital deepening on the supply side of the economy. All in all, any serious
scaling back of investment would risk some unwinding of the virtuous cycle
of investment, productivity, and price restraint from which we benefited in
recent years.
With the return to capital having been well maintained despite an
investment boom that has lasted more than five years and with no signs that
business demand for new equipment is letting up, we are reasonably
comfortable with our forecast of continued strong investment spending. But
clearly, this is an area that will bear close scrutiny in the period ahead.
There are also upside risks to demand associated with our outlook for
the supply side of the economy. As I noted earlier, we have assumed that
much of the good news on the supply side already has been discounted by
the markets. If we are wrong, and the enthusiasm of investors is rekindled
by the pace of productivity growth envisioned in this forecast, a Fed
perceived to be on hold, and no marked near-term deterioration of inflation,
then a snapback in equity markets, with the accompanying consequences for
faster growth of private spending and higher resource utilization, could
present a more difficult environment in which to make policy.
Karen will now complete our presentation.
MS. JOHNSON. After the Greenbook was finalized last week, we
received trade data for June. The figure for the trade balance surprised us a
bit. Both exports and imports grew more rapidly than we or BEA had
penciled in for June, with exports showing the larger upward revision. We
would now project second-quarter GDP growth at a 5.1 percent annual rate,
rather than the 4.9 percent in the Greenbook.
The strength in June exports is consistent with the basic message in the
Greenbook regarding the global economy: Economic activity in the rest of
the world is expanding vigorously on average. Many industrial and
developing countries have gone a long way toward closing output gaps--in
some cases eliminating ones that had opened widely during the crisis years
of 1997-1998. Inflation pressures, while for the most part not too far
advanced, are beginning to threaten in some countries. In response, central
banks in several industrial and developing countries have already increased
official lending rates; and our Greenbook forecast incorporates the
assumption of further tightening moves.

23

One notable exception in this generally favorable picture is Japan,
although some signs of economic recovery have emerged there as well. So
far, that recovery has largely taken the form of expanding private investment
spending, and it seems fragile to us. Japanese household consumption
spending remains restrained, although recent signs are positive. Fiscal
stimulus is likely to diminish next year, as some of the elements of the
supplementary package from nearly one year ago finally have their effect
but quickly run their course in the near term and others lapse without ever
being acted upon. We see real output in Japan continuing to grow, but
weakly. The Bank of Japan moved recently to end its zero interest rate
policy, amidst controversy with other government officials over whether the
conditions for such a move had yet arrived. We judge that the pace of
recovery in Japan will not warrant further moves in the near term, and in our
forecast we have assumed no additional measures by the Bank of Japan over
the next six quarters.
The projected strength of foreign output is an important factor
underpinning our outlook for continued robust growth of exports. Another is
the moderate rate of decline we have again forecast for the exchange value
of the dollar, starting next quarter. The fundamental reason for this
expectation is the growing net international indebtedness of the United
States and the associated rising total of claims on the U.S. economy in
foreign portfolios. But as the last few years have clearly shown, we have no
way of determining when the foreign appetite for dollar claims will stop
expanding. As long as foreign investors judge U.S. investment
opportunities to be more attractive than those elsewhere, capital inflows will
respond, and the dollar could well remain strong. One argument in favor of
an early adjustment in the dollar is our expectation that further monetary
tightening moves abroad are likely in the near term, especially by the central
banks of key foreign industrial countries, whereas the Greenbook path
assumes an unchanged U.S. federal funds rate until later in the forecast
period. The projected depreciation of the dollar also acts to slow import
demand in the Greenbook forecast.
Because our path for the dollar has a sizable impact on the staff
outlook, we included in this Greenbook an alternative scenario using the
global model in which the dollar continues to strengthen throughout the
forecast period. In particular, we simulated the outcome under the
assumption that the dollar continues to trend up and by the end of next year
reaches a level about 8 percent above its second-quarter average. In that
case, the staff model suggests that both GDP growth and core inflation
would be about 1-2 percentage point lower in 2001 than in the current
forecast.

24
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Karen or Dave, the new Greenbook assumptions for potential growth and
your forecast for actual GDP growth are, I believe, way above the market consensus if one looks at
the Blue Chip forecasts, for example. What do you think the chances are that the baseline forecast
may actually be accompanied by a stronger foreign demand for our capital and also a stronger
dollar? It seems to me that that would be the most likely outcome, given these changes in the
assumptions in the Greenbook forecast. I think this is particularly important since, as your
alternative simulation indicated, that would take some of the pressures off inflation.
MS. JOHNSON. It certainly is a reason why we thought this was the right time to include
that alternative as opposed to some other alternative. Nevertheless, it’s not unlike the problem
David described with respect to the stock market. Will 4 percent growth in 2001 come as a big
surprise to everybody? In that case, a range of asset prices might adjust, including the U.S. stock
market as well as the dollar. Will it come as a surprise to some but not to others, and will it have a
differential impact on assets? We can’t rule that out in some sense. We’ve often seen news move
the bond market and stock market in ways that don’t seem entirely consistent.
To be honest, I don’t know. I can tell you that most of the public forecasts that I’ve seen
do not have U.S. net exports in the current account widening the way we do in 2001. And when I
look to see why, it’s because those forecasts have much lower U.S. growth than we have. So I have
to believe that outcome, if it materializes, is going to be a surprise to some forecasters. But whether
it will be a surprise to investors is something we really have a hard time judging at this point.
MR. STOCKTON. Just to follow up on that: I indicated in my remarks that we hapless
economists are slowly writing up our forecasts for productivity growth. I think the Blue Chip

25
forecasters may be even more hapless than we are. Those forecasts suggest considerably lower
potential output growth than we have. That just doesn’t seem consistent with what one hears.
MR. PARRY. Well, I’m not saying that their forecast is right.
MR. STOCKTON. No, but it doesn’t seem entirely consistent with the earnings
expectations that one hears in financial markets.
MR. PARRY. But when they are more convinced about the truth--which is found in the
Greenbook, of course--that would probably affect investors’ appetite for dollars.
MR. STOCKTON. As both Karen and I indicated in our remarks, we certainly upped the
risk in that regard. We made the assumption that it has been largely discounted, but we’re not totally
sure about that.
MR. PARRY. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Broaddus.
MR. BROADDUS. David, you may have touched on this and if you did, I missed it. You
have a very weak projection for housing activity in this quarter and also going forward for at least
the next couple of quarters. It’s important, I think, because that dip in housing activity is a
significant element in the slowing of growth that is forecast for the second half of this year.
Mortgage rates have come down significantly in the last four or five weeks. I was just wondering if
you have taken full account of that. Or is that a risk in the outlook?
MR. STOCKTON. We think we have taken account of that. It is still the case, obviously,
that mortgage rates are up considerably from their lows and that ARM rates also are significantly
higher than they have been. This is an area of the forecast where I think we have been somewhat
surprised on the down side in terms of the extent of the weakening. Actually, in the next few
months, we don’t have further declines from where we are. We have housing activity basically

26
holding at current levels on the thought that the tip down in mortgage rates is probably going to
provide, at least temporarily, some support for the current levels. But all of the advance indicators
still suggest that activity in that sector is likely to be weak in the period ahead. There is certainly
some risk to that forecast, especially because we could get a temporary bounceback if people
perceive this as an opportunity to get into the market and they rush to do the buying they had put off
when rates were rising more rapidly.
MR. BROADDUS. We are hearing a little bit of that anecdotally.
MR. STOCKTON. I think there are upside and downside risks there as well.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you. My question is for Karen on the international side, but it
does feed back on the domestic side. I’m still not sure what I ought to be thinking with regard to
developments external to the United States and how that feeds back on our economy and, by
implication, on our policy choices. There was the suggestion that inflationary pressures may be
emerging increasingly in other countries because of the closing of gaps and that, therefore, some
tightening of policy abroad might be coming along, which might tie in with a weaker U.S. dollar.
But of course if all of the reason for higher nominal interest rates were higher inflation abroad
compared to the past or to inflation in the United States, then in real differential terms it wouldn’t
have any implication for the U.S. dollar or for our policy actions. You may have had this in mind
and it wasn’t coming out clearly to me: If we thought that what is emerging abroad is all demand
side economic activity, driven by whatever--monetary, fiscal policy stimuli or something--and that’s
all, that’s one thing. But suppose we were to accept that some or a significant share of what is
emerging abroad is supply side activity, as we are now more increasingly incorporating into our
thinking about the United States. If we started to think that economies abroad were in the early

27
stages of what we have experienced over the last four or five years, wouldn’t we come to a different
conclusion about the implications for the dollar and for the feedback on the United States economy?
Your alternative simulation in the Greenbook says that if the dollar is 8 percent stronger, that’s going
to reduce our real GDP and inflation. Well, that’s mechanical. That’s because of the net trade
effect. But that wouldn’t be true if what we are seeing, or if what we were willing to think about
what we’re seeing--whether it’s in Latin America, Asia, or Europe--is more a supply side kind of
experience that is driving their growth, their productivity, and their employment.
MS. JOHNSON. Let me answer the question in two halves. Under the assumption that
the same rules apply as have for years, I think in the face of rising inflation pressures--largely, if you
will, from spending shifting up in these economies--foreign central banks will bring about some,
though perhaps limited, increase in real interest rates. They aren’t just going to keep pace with
inflation, they are going to try to constrain it and they will have small increases in real interest rates.
That is in effect what we were referring to when we said we see some increases even perhaps as
soon as two weeks from now. The market seems to think the ECB will act again that quickly,
although today’s news may have changed that. Today there was a weak survey number from
Germany.
The question of whether or not the types of technological changes that have driven the
U.S. secular and cyclical experience over the past several years are emerging abroad--and if so
where and at what pace--is consuming numerous researchers around the globe. And that includes
the people who work here in the International Finance Division. The clearest evidence is in
Australia, if we want to cite a foreign country as an example. The Australians see it happening, we
see it happening, and the world sees it happening in Australia. In other places people are looking as
carefully as they can and they are remaining skeptical. There are some small places in Europe where

28
we can see this sort of thing happening. Finland, oddly enough, is one and it’s not just Stolichnaya,
their vodka! But, as I hinted in the Chart Show six weeks ago, we were looking in various countries
for venture capital spending, we were looking for the composition of investment, and we were
looking for the behavior of their stock markets. We were looking everywhere we could for evidence
of it. It should be there at some point. One can make arguments about why features of certain
economies may make them slower or less likely to incorporate technological change to their
advantage as quickly as we do. But it’s hard to believe that any of those constraints could actually
keep it from happening. Could the electrification of Europe have been suppressed by some kind of
bad structural policy three generations ago? I doubt it. I don’t think technological change can be
completely suppressed now, even with some bad policy. So we are very alert to this. The fact is that
in putting together the Greenbook forecast, we were not able to find enough concrete evidence of it
happening yet that we felt we should try to factor it in systematically.
I would point out that if I thought it were happening, I might be more aggressive in
lowering the dollar, in the sense that the attractiveness of investment opportunities in the United
States has been cited as one of the more important factors influencing the dollar. So, if those who
were doing the saving in the world came to believe that investments at home were on the cutting
edge, so to speak, I think they’d be only too happy to invest at home. And that could cause the
dollar to fall more rapidly than we’ve portrayed in the tiny depreciation we have in the Greenbook.
MR. JORDAN. I agree with the partial analysis implication of that last comment, but also
our export demand would-MS. JOHNSON. It would benefit, yes.
MR. JORDAN. Certainly. I don’t know what those elasticities are, but that goes in the
opposite direction.

29
MS. JOHNSON. It does, although on the whole, given that our current account has
worsened and yet the dollar has risen, we’re inclined to explain that by saying the investment
opportunity mechanism has been more important for the United States over the last three years.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Further questions for our colleagues? If not, who would
like to start the discussion? President Moskow.
PRESIDENT MOSKOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When we met in June, one of the
key challenges that we faced was assessing whether the moderation in demand we’d seen at that
point was real. Now we have tangible evidence in the affirmative. Both the anecdotal reports and
the statistical data confirm that demand growth moderated from the first quarter to the second.
Today the question we face is whether the slowing will persist or if instead we will see a rebound, as
we have several times in the last few years.
Reports in the Seventh District suggest it’s more likely that the moderate pace will persist
in the second half of the year. In support of this assessment, the list of industries citing slowing has
increased and now includes retailing, motor vehicles--especially heavy trucks--machine tools, steel,
aluminum, and paper. Housing in the Midwest had been doing relatively better than in the rest of the
United States, but recently it has moved more in line with the slowing that we’ve seen nationally.
As to Al Broaddus’ point, we have not seen any bounceback in the Midwest in the housing area.
In terms of consumer spending, most retailers reported overall slowing, with July sales
marked by weakness in apparel and strength in home-related items such as appliances and furniture.
One of our directors from the retail industry indicated that this pattern had continued into August.
He said that back-to-school sales were disappointing so far. Actually, he said they “stink.”
[Laughter] But customers were in the stores and buying other items. Another retailing contact noted
continued but moderating gains in sales of furniture and housewares. Light vehicle sales are down

30
from the exceedingly strong pace earlier this year, having leveled off at an annual sales rate of 17
million units over the last three months. Automakers are not expecting sales in August and the rest
of the year to deviate significantly from recent levels. However, inventories are somewhat higher
than desired and incentives continue to be very important in supporting sales. One of the Big Three
automakers indicated that it expects to reduce production levels later this year rather than increase
incentives further. In addition, business demand has ebbed or is at relatively low levels for some
manufactured products important to our District. Heavy truck makers, for example, noted continued
significant slowing in activity, and some have announced layoffs. Production of farm equipment is
up somewhat from the low levels of a year ago, but demand remains modest. Due to favorable
growing conditions, record corn and soybean crops are projected for this year, which has contributed
to lower commodity prices and extended the expected recovery period for many areas of the farm
sector.
Labor markets are still tight in the Midwest, but we’ve had some signs and reports of
modest easing. The unemployment rate for our five states has been drifting up since early this year
and, while it’s still below the nation’s, the differential has narrowed. Some contacts in the retailing
and restaurant industries noted less difficulty finding workers in the Midwest.
In contrast to this evidence, the latest Manpower survey indicates continued strong
demand for labor in the Midwest and all other regions of the United States. Hiring plans for the
fourth quarter are higher than in any year-end quarter in the 25-year history of the survey. However,
our contact at Manpower senses that there has been some easing in labor markets; it’s a feeling
based on discussions with their staff and their clients rather than on hard data. The Manpower
survey results won’t be released until August 28th, so they should be treated confidentially until then.

31
Turning to the national outlook, the probability of a soft landing seems to have increased
over the last two months. First, there’s clear evidence of moderating demand. Second, the news on
productivity growth has been outstanding. And third, core PCE inflation has remained modest in
recent months. Although I still believe that the risks are tilted toward higher inflation, I’m
reasonably comfortable with the current stance of monetary policy. One wild card, of course, is the
outlook for a continuing deterioration of the current account deficit. The good news for now is that
our high productivity growth makes the United States an attractive place for foreign capital
investment. But as we discussed earlier, we must be mindful that capital flows can reverse quickly,
putting pressure on the dollar and interest rates. That adjustment process would be stressful for the
U.S. economy and would increase inflationary pressures. Nevertheless, my view is that the U.S.
economy seems well positioned for a soft landing this year.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Overall, economic growth in the Twelfth
District picked up in recent months, though we see signs of slowing in housing construction. Also,
high and volatile electricity prices have led to some disruptions in production. For the four months
ended in July, employment in the West grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, up from the 2.6 percent
pace reported for the first quarter. This is not just due to strength in California, as employment in
five other states in the West is growing well above the rate for the nation. Within the region, job
growth in the Northwest is lagging the rest of the region, but it’s close to the U.S. growth rate. With
the strong growth in the West, labor markets remain tight. The gains in jobs have been broad-based
among the service-producing sectors. While dot-coms are facing a tougher environment, available
evidence in business services points to continued strong employment growth at software and
Internet-related firms. However, signs of slowing in the single-family housing market are present in

32
much of the West. For example, single-family permits have declined this year. Moreover, outside
of California, construction employment has been relatively flat in recent months. Even in rapidly
growing Arizona, construction employment has contracted. In California, conditions in the housing
market are more complicated. Recent weakness in single-family permits has been offset by strength
in multifamily permits. There also has been substantial upward pressure on house prices in much of
the state, primarily because the supply of housing has lagged woefully behind the growth in
underlying demand for several years. Also, analysis by our staff provides support for the commonly
held view that housing prices in the San Francisco Bay area have been boosted by the substantial
increase in wealth of high-tech employees as a result of stock options. Moreover, the analysis
suggests that even with the correction in stock prices this year, those wealth effects are continuing to
boost housing demand in the region.
Another notable development in the West is the hike in electricity prices. This has led to
higher direct costs to some users not shielded by rate freezes or fixed-rate contracts. Higher prices
have meant disruptions to and rescheduling of production at some firms. In the Northwest,
aluminum producers drawn to the region by the allure of low-cost hydroelectric power have
announced layoffs and shutdowns of some facilities. In California, the governor reduced the cap on
the wholesale price of electricity from $500 per megawatt hour to $250. Last week prices hit the cap
on each of the five weekdays.
Turning to the national scene, the second-quarter slowdown in the growth of real private
demand, especially consumption, was encouraging. Like the Greenbook, we expect slower spending
growth to show up in the real GDP data this quarter. Our forecast is that real output will grow at a
rate of roughly 3-3/4 percent over the rest of the year and at about the same pace next year. In
making this forecast I’m aware that no slowdown is evident in investment spending. These data

33
suggest that there is a risk that output growth may not slow as much as we’re expecting. They also
suggest that productivity growth is likely to remain robust. Robust productivity growth helps keep
the roughly 5 percent ECI growth we are projecting from pushing up inflation. In particular,
incorporating the Board staff’s productivity assumptions leads us to predict slightly less inflation
than does the Greenbook for 2001. Part of the reason is that we incorporated a higher path for the
dollar than is in the Greenbook. This higher path seems appropriate to us in light of the rapid
acceleration assumed for productivity. Nevertheless, core inflation this year and next is still
expected to be higher than it was last year. And it seems to me that the balance of risks remains
tilted toward higher inflation. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Guynn.
MR. GUYNN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The economy in our Southeast region remains
sturdy, but it’s clearly expanding less rapidly than earlier in the year. I sense a growing caution and
noticeably less exuberance on several fronts. Obviously, the moderation is most evident in housing.
That slowing is now even showing up on the west coast of Florida, which has been so hot for so
long. Moderation in the residential housing markets now has to be considered convincing and not
just a one- or two-month phenomenon like we’ve seen earlier. Retailers also are giving us a
somewhat different reading this time around. They tell us that while sales generally continue to
meet now-lowered expectations, there are growing instances where sales have come in below
expectations.
Perhaps most interesting of all to me are the comments we have been getting from our
bankers over the last six weeks. There’s an amazingly consistent report from our larger banks of a
falloff in loan demand across the region, and it’s reported to be across borrowers from many sectors.
One banker reported that his bank cancelled its most recent loan review meeting because of no

34
agenda. Bankers tell us that a number of projects and spending plans have been put on hold until
their customers can assess where things are going. I’ve had similar reports from large contractors
who say they are seeing some projects delayed as owners have become more cautious.
Some things have not changed in our region. Tourism activity and future tourist bookings
remain strong, although history tells us that's one of the last places people adjust their spending. The
oil and gas industry is finally responding convincingly to higher oil prices, as rig counts are now
substantially above year-ago levels and close to all-time highs. And our labor markets remain
stretched with few signs of easing, especially for skilled workers. Despite this, wages and prices
generally are not showing a large movement except for the passthrough of higher oil prices and
pharmaceutical health care insurance program costs.
On the national front, I would agree with the Greenbook that there is evidence,
particularly from the more interest-sensitive sectors, that activity may be moderating. And if one is
willing to look hard enough, there are other tentative signs of moderation such as in the jobs
numbers. Overall, I still judge the economy to be strong, as evidenced by the strong GDP report and
the continued strength in business investment. Although I think we all would like to have locked in
the very low inflation numbers we saw earlier, I view recent price movements as generally
constrained. Having said that, I would join those who observe that were it not for the continued
acceleration in the application of technology and the associated productivity gains, I do believe we
would be facing a more troublesome set of inflation numbers and outlook than is evident today.
While I think we can conclude that our policy moves helped nudge the economy in the direction of a
more sustainable pace, the question remains on the table as to whether we’ve done enough to damp
aggregate demand and better align it with supply.

35
We’ve experienced numerous shocks on the inflation front: first, the damping effects of
the Asian crisis; and second, the rise in energy prices. Together these factors seem to be working
their way through the economy without yet engendering acceleration in trend inflation. I’m also
convinced from our model simulations that we did pay a price for our earlier reductions in rates
during the Asian crisis, and that has been a factor in the upward drift in prices since 1998. I would
say again that I still believe in preemptive policymaking. And if I fully believed the forecast in the
Greenbook and some of our own VAR modeling work, I would be more anxious to get at least
modestly more restraint in place sooner. As we continue to sort out our views on reasonable
assumptions about future productivity and to identify what portion of the general price pressures we
are seeing and forecasting is related to the run-up in oil prices--directly or indirectly--I think it’s
reasonable to let things play out a bit more. At the same time, I think it’s very important to indicate
that the balance of risks is on the side of potential deterioration in inflation, as a reminder to both
ourselves and to others that our work may not be done. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Hoenig.
MR. HOENIG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The overall economy for the Tenth District
remains solid; it hasn’t changed a great deal from last time. However, there have been some very
slight signs of further slowing since the last meeting. In the interest-sensitive sectors, particularly
home building, there is clear evidence of some cooling. Also, manufacturing activity appears to
have slowed systematically across the District in both the durable and nondurable goods areas. And
while retail sales picked up in July, the environment in that sector is clearly softer throughout the
District than it was earlier this year.
However, in the other direction, nonresidential construction remains very solid in the
District and energy activity has expanded fairly significantly as higher oil, particularly gas, prices

36
have persisted throughout the last several weeks. Labor markets remain strong in the region.
Unemployment rates continue to hover around the 3 percent range. But having said that, there are
no real signs of increased wage pressures. So, the situation is fairly much the same within the
District.
On the national level, my views haven’t changed significantly from the time of our last
meeting. The economy is carrying momentum forward, but more signs of slowing continue to come
in on the national level. And core inflation pressures obviously remain modest. Perhaps one way to
describe our projection is to say that it is very similar to that of the Greenbook except in a couple of
areas. In our analysis we don’t have in mind a level of demand as strong as in the Board staff’s
projection. Our forecast of productivity gains is a bit less aggressive and that outcome assumes less
aggressive interest rate increases over the period. So, going forward, we see some modest slowing
in the economy and continued modest pressures on inflation. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Minehan.
MS. MINEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a few more hints of a slowdown
in the New England economy since our last meeting. Regional employment growth has slowed
recently, especially in construction, in the finance, insurance, and real estate areas, and in
transportation and public utilities. Residential construction contracts have turned down, as have
single-unit housing permits, and existing home sales have returned to their 1999 level. However, it’s
not clear in either employment trends or in housing whether this observed slowing is fully a demand
phenomenon or still has some supply characteristics to it. Labor markets remain exceedingly tight,
with several New England states recording unemployment rates below 3 percent and the rate for the
region as a whole well below--a percentage point or more--the nation’s. Everywhere I go in the
District, employers complain about the lack of available workers and the potential for faster growth

37
if only a greater supply of labor could be found. Similarly, real estate brokers report that a
diminishing supply of new and existing homes is a factor in declining sales, though reduced
affordability is a factor as well.
Contacts continue to report rising wage costs, though the regional data suggest that wage
pressures are off a bit from their high in mid-1999. We also continue to hear reports about novel
adjustments to tight labor markets and increasing investments in productivity-enhancing technology.
Firms report using out-of-cycle pay raises, higher starting pay, and greater shift differentials; they
also seek to offset these increased costs by reducing educational requirements for new hires and
compensating for that by providing more training and using more sophisticated technology. Clearly,
they believe the task of both finding and rewarding employees has become more and more difficult.
A major question for the region and for the nation as a whole is whether these signs of
slowing really signal a trend. In that regard, I think the national data may be a bit clearer than the
local. In New England, while job growth and housing are less robust, whether because of demand or
supply or some combination of the two, manufacturing is not. Indeed, while manufacturing job
counts are not expanding, they also are not declining as much as they were last year. Moreover,
manufacturing contacts are extremely optimistic about demand, with one diversified capital goods
manufacturer describing business as “sizzling.” Not surprisingly, this is especially true for
manufacturers of high-tech equipment, with one semiconductor business reporting a 90 percent
increase in revenues and a 40 percent increase in orders for the second quarter over a year ago on the
heels of an extraordinary first quarter. For some, this optimism may reflect a sense of relief that
things haven’t been worse, given the interest rate increases. Others, however, firmly attach their
optimism to the growing demand in foreign markets, especially the Asian Pacific region. They also
note rising input prices, especially oil-based inputs. But in general these rising prices are being

38
offset by volume discounts, electronic purchasing using the Internet, and by a continued shifting of
production to foreign locations.
I’ve begun to host a series of luncheons with regional high-tech CEOs, focusing primarily
on the subject of productivity. In particular, I’ve asked the CEOs who have attended to assess
whether and when, if at all, trends in productivity growth are likely to level off. And while these
luncheons are only in an early stage, the comments from CEOs producing very different high-tech
products were surprisingly similar. First, they believe that much of the change to date has worked to
create a platform from which further progress can be made or a whole range of new products
produced more easily. That is, productivity growth in their view is not likely even to level off soon.
Second, they believe the action--in terms of innovation--is confined almost entirely to the United
States, with not much taking place elsewhere. And finally, they envisage an enormous array of
opportunities in their industries looking forward. Clearly, these CEOs are optimistic about the
enduring and even accelerating pace of productivity growth.
As I look at the national scene, and particularly at the Board staff’s forecast, I’m struck by
the fact that the authors of the Greenbook seem to be in close contact with these CEOs [laughter] and
are increasingly optimistic, if not euphoric, about the potential for increased productivity. While it is
increasingly easier and more tempting to become a believer in that outlook, I think some caution is
warranted. Moving the growth of potential from 4.25 to 4.75 percent puts the staff’s estimate well
above that of most other forecasters, though recently DRI seems to have drunk from the same water.
When I look at our forecast at the Boston Fed, I’m struck by how powerful that
assumption about higher rates of productivity is. Our forecast takes more of a mainstream position
on potential growth--somewhere in the mid- to low 3 percent area; it also assumes the secondquarter slowing in consumption and housing will continue, and looks ahead without any change in

39
policy. Comparing this to the flat funds rate alternative forecast in the Greenbook, unemployment in
2001 is a half percentage point lower and PCE inflation is almost a full percentage point higher with
a lower estimate of GDP growth.
The Greenbook’s optimism about productivity thus makes a large difference in how one
views future prospects and how concerned one is about the state of current policy. Now, I’m not
saying that the Greenbook forecast is seriously flawed. Certainly, the detail and the care with which
it is put together give it great credibility. But what if it’s wrong? What if the near future brings
slower cyclical productivity, which even the Greenbook acknowledges is possible, and inflation
instead of trending down or sideways, depending on what measure is used, turns upward from its
already elevated levels? Does anybody really like the fact that the overall CPI number now starts
with a 3 rather than a lower number, even though oil is the main driver of the higher number?
People do look to oil prices in judging their views on inflation and how they think about the future.
Or are we really satisfied with the way the core rate has accelerated over the last year or so?
The cost of inflation getting out of hand could be significant in terms of financial market
volatility and lost central bank credibility. Wouldn't it make more sense to be less optimistic about
productivity and expect to tighten policy sooner rather than later? If we are wrong and the economy
slows too much, reversing course may give markets some confidence rather than causing
disruptions. It seems to me that at present there is a real asymmetry in the risks, where being wrong
by using assumptions that are too optimistic is potentially much more costly than taking a more
conservative, less optimistic approach. Now may not be the time to act. Some tightening is in the
pipeline and the economy has begun to slow a bit. But it is also not the time to think we can throw
in the towel for the rest of the year.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Broaddus.

40
MR. BROADDUS. Mr. Chairman, the latest information we have from our District is a
bit more mixed than it was at earlier meetings this year. On the one hand, factory output has
remained at a very high level in most, though not all, District manufacturing industries. Labor
markets are still tight. We have low state unemployment rates also. Cathy, Virginia's rate is at
2-1/2 percent and even in West Virginia, which has perennially high structural unemployment, the
rate is at about 5-1/4 percent, I believe. In Fairfax County, Virginia--I don't know who computes
this--the reported unemployment rate is 0.9 percent. I don't know what the NAIRU is in Fairfax,
[Laughter] but that is a low unemployment rate. In general in this situation, in contrast to the point
you made about wages in your area, Tom, we are seeing fairly widespread indications across the
District of at least a moderate acceleration in wage growth, especially in manufacturing. So, I think
for the most part we still have strong production and tight labor markets.
At the same time, though, like others we do see concrete evidence now of softer demand
in our area than we had seen heretofore. Retail sales overall are still growing, but sales of durable
goods, big-ticket items, have moderated noticeably in recent weeks. In asking Dave Stockton earlier
about housing activity going forward, I talked about the possibility of stronger sales. But residential
construction has been weak and home sales have been weaker in our area as well. That has had a
particularly noticeable effect on furniture sales, which is a big industry in our region. And we are
seeing some diminution in the output of the major furniture companies in our District. We had a
report recently that business at a national furniture trade show--I think this was in Dallas, Bob--was
about 20 percent lower than at the same show a year ago. And a former director who runs a fairly
good sized furniture manufacturing company in western North Carolina told us that he has laid off
all of his temporary workers. Back in the second quarter business was really thriving, but now he
has laid off all his temporary workers, is operating some of his plants only four days a week, and is

41
offering discounts for the first time in a while because his inventories have been moving up so
quickly. So, again, I’d say we have a mixed picture in the District.
With respect to the national economy, rather than commenting on the particulars of the
Greenbook forecast, which seems reasonable enough to me, let me just offer a general reflection if I
may. Clearly, the place to start today in thinking about the implications for monetary policy of
recent developments in the economy is the remarkable recent growth in labor productivity and the
extent to which that growth has continued to accelerate. People use the word “amazing” a lot, but it
is amazing to me. As the Greenbook points out, growth in output per hour in the nonfarm business
sector exceeded 5 percent in the four quarters ended in the second quarter. That’s the fastest
productivity growth since 1983 when we were coming out of the deepest recession in the post-World
War II period. It is also especially striking given that the trend growth in productivity in the first
part of the 1990s was only 1-1/2 percent.
Nevertheless, in light of the wide range in which productivity growth has moved over the
last decade, I think there is still a lot of room for doubt and uncertainty about the persistence of its
recent behavior and where the trend will ultimately settle going forward. Moreover, as we’ve
discussed before, productivity growth for monetary policy is a two-edged sword. In the short run
faster productivity growth, of course, allows firms to pay higher wages without necessarily raising
prices, which is why a lot of people see the recent increase in productivity growth as a reason for us
not to tighten policy further. But we know that rising productivity growth also produces a wealth
effect. It is most visible in higher equity values. Even more importantly, it is also evident in
household expectations of future wage growth. And they are rising. It is the magnitude and timing
of this wealth effect that ultimately determines whether the growth of demand over time outpaces the
growth of supply. That, of course, is essentially the main focus of our concerns.

42
For purposes of evaluating our policy options today, we need to know as much as we can
about the prospective evolution of productivity growth and its likely impact on wealth and spending
over time. That raises a couple of questions about the recent burst in productivity growth that we are
all witnessing and marveling at. First, how long will it persist and will it conceivably rise to an even
higher rate than we have had to this point? Second, to what extent has the surge already affected
household and business spending plans? Have they been affected a lot already or is there perhaps a
lot more still to come? In other words, what is the public’s recognition lag with respect to changing
productivity growth? You alluded to this at least implicitly, David, in your comments about how
productivity may affect spending going forward. These questions obviously are very difficult to
answer. But as I see it, at least, they are the core questions that we need to be focusing on now in
making monetary policy decisions at a time when structural productivity growth is very much in
play. I think the staff can help us do this. For example, in the Greenbook conceivably you could
present some alternative simulations for trend productivity growth the way you do now for the funds
rate and equity values. And you might discuss how different recognition lags could affect the timing
of the impact of these productivity changes on spending in the future. But ultimately econometric
and statistical analysis, I think, can only take us so far at a time when we are in a situation that is
totally unprecedented, at least in the modern history with which I’m familiar.
At the end of the day in this very unique period, I believe this Committee is going to have
to make some difficult policy calls the old fashioned way, by sharing relevant anecdotal information
around the table. We need to discuss what is happening and what may happen prospectively to
productivity growth in particular industries and particular regions and then use this information as
best we can to make reasonable judgments about what’s going to happen to productivity growth in
the aggregate going forward. Obviously, we’ve been doing this a great deal already. But I think we

43
may need to focus even more clearly and directly on these kinds of issues than we have to this point.
That’s my reflection. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Stern.
MR. STERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sifting through the recent data and anecdotes
on the District economy suggests that it remains quite healthy but that some changes are occurring
beneath the surface. First of all, employment gains remain substantial. That is not a change. Labor
markets are very tight and there is some continued upward pressure on compensation. On the other
hand, our contacts say that significant price competition persists. Overall manufacturing activity is
strengthening, although some producers are expressing concerns about higher energy bills, and if
that persists, I think it is a factor that probably will affect output going forward. It appears that
consumer spending and residential construction activity have slowed a bit, but at this point those
adjustments appear to be modest in magnitude. In any event, nonresidential construction remains
quite strong.
We have made some inquiries recently about productivity and its prospects because some
of our business contacts have expressed the view that the large gains--maybe the largest gains in
productivity--are now behind us. While some people adhere to that view, I would say that the
majority of our business contacts remain quite optimistic about the outlook for productivity and
believe that further large gains are in store. So, overall, we are hearing a pretty positive, optimistic
story in that regard.
As for the nation, it looks to me as if the U.S. economy is on a favorable course. I think
the outlook for real economic growth remains positive. As far as inflation is concerned, our VAR
model has no acceleration of inflation over the next four quarters; it has inflation running a bit below
2-1/2 percent at an annual rate. Obviously, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding that kind of

44
forecast, but if it's more or less correct, it suggests that we at a minimum have some time before we
have to take further steps to address that issue. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President McTeer.
MR. MCTEER. First, regarding the Greenbook forecast, the Board’s staff is appropriately
euphoric about productivity. [Laughter] Second, productivity growth is a good thing and recent
productivity growth certainly has not produced a wealth effect through the stock market.
As for our regional economy, growth in the Eleventh District has slackened somewhat
over the last few months, but it continues at a healthy and sustainable rate. Labor market tightness,
the impact of past interest rate hikes, and a stalled stock market are factors frequently cited for the
slower pace. Reduced growth in the interest-sensitive sectors has been partially offset by the
recovery of the oil and gas industry, which is still in its early stages. In spite of growth having
slowed from its breakneck pace of late 1999 and early 2000, the Texas unemployment rate at 4.1
percent is now at its lowest level since 1974. I might reiterate that in the major metropolitan areas of
Texas the unemployment rate is considerably below 4 percent. The rate for the State of Texas is
held up primarily by the border counties, but even in those areas the unemployment rates have come
down significantly.
The value of construction contracts in Texas has been on a downward trend since early in
the year, having fallen 14 percent year-to-date. Residential construction is off slightly but
commercial construction is down sharply. We are beginning to see some diverging views on future
growth in construction activity. Several developers are very optimistic about future demand growth
but they have begun to complain that lenders are “unjustly restraining construction because they fear
overbuilding." A quick look at office vacancy rates in an historical context suggests that the real
estate developers may have a case. Houston downtown vacancies are at an 18-year low, and in

45
Austin rents and occupancy rates of 98 percent are at their highest levels on record. The tighter
lending standards that banks are reporting in our lending officer surveys seem to be reinforcing the
impact of higher interest rates.
Another area of slower activity is retail sales. In addition, continued drought has added to
the troubles of farmers and ranchers. High-tech industries, especially semiconductors, have been
enjoying steady sales growth internationally since the end of the Asian crisis. Salary increases in the
high-tech sector--notably in the Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin areas--are running at a 16 percent
annual rate in the second quarter. And recruiters are saying that IT professionals can name their own
salaries. With H(1)B visa legislation stalled in Congress, the shortage of IT workers is not expected
to end anytime soon. Before we jump to the conclusion that double-digit wage gains translate into
price inflation, let's remember that prices of products such as semiconductors, computers, and
peripherals have been declining at a 15 to 25 percent rate for years on end.
At the national level, the economy appears to reflect the same factors that are affecting the
Eleventh District, except that higher oil and gas prices impact it differently. The more interestsensitive sectors of the economy have slowed. The slower growth of demand, in tandem with
constant competitive pressures, has kept inflationary pressures in check. In fact, outside of the
inflation numbers in February and March, there has not been a major inflation breakout this year.
Productivity growth has kept pace with compensation gains, yielding a decline in unit labor costs in
the last four quarters. Most commodity prices have been contained. Gold has hovered around a low
$270 level and the dollar remains strong. We still hear as many complaints about the lack of pricing
power as we do about labor scarcity. I read this as evidence that our monetary policy is appropriate
and that we can afford to await evidence to the contrary before feeling compelled to raise rates again.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Poole.

46
MR. POOLE. Mr. Chairman, the reports around the Eighth District are broadly consistent
with those already noted for other parts of the country. I would summarize by saying that the
pressure is off but there is no sign that the economy is sinking.
One comment on the labor market: My UPS contact indicated that his firm has had no
problem in obtaining professionals and that for the first time in several years the issue of entry-level
labor has been successfully addressed. I had reported earlier that obtaining the entry-level labor to
do package-sorting work had been a terrible problem for UPS. He noted that the turnover for entrylevel workers is down to 30 percent as compared with 40 to 45 percent a year ago. So, the retention
bonuses and the referral bonuses have done exactly what the firm had hoped they would do. Our
contacts at both UPS and FedEx also reported that the international markets that they deal with are
booming.
I absolutely agree with the Greenbook outlook that it is more likely that inflation is going
to be creeping up than drifting down. And I would like to reemphasize or echo the point that Cathy
Minehan made: The reason for separating energy prices from other prices is to try to differentiate a
temporary development from something that is longer running. But energy prices have now been
going up long enough and are likely to remain at their current level, so that factoring them out of our
thinking and just looking at the core CPI instead of paying attention to the total CPI I think is a
mistake.
I have a comment on the Greenbook forecasting exercise. I would like to see a forecast-and whether we call it a baseline forecast or not I don’t really care--that is built as far as possible on
assumptions that are consistent with market forecasts. I think that is the case with oil prices now.
The assumption for oil prices is essentially what is in the futures market. I would like to see that
basis for assumptions carried through wherever it can be. For exchange rates, that is not the

47
assumption in the staff projection. We can debate what the long-run course of exchange rates may
turn out to be. But to have a forecast for exchange rates over the next year or 18 months that differs
with the market forecast is perhaps not the most productive way to assess the outlook because we
don’t know when these long-run forces will begin to take hold. At any rate, I would like to see a
Greenbook forecast that is based on the market forecast for exchange rates. And I would say the
same about the forecast for the federal funds rate. There is a substantial divergence now between the
federal funds assumption in the Greenbook forecast and the federal funds assumption that is built
into market data. And unless we know where that difference is coming from, it seems to me that we
may not be getting the most we possibly can out of the market evidence that is in front of us.
I’m uneasy about building the Greenbook forecast on the assumption of accelerating
productivity. Productivity has accelerated; the growth rate has been rising. But to project the rise
into the future I would say is a risky proposition. It may well be correct, but we know so little about
productivity and the underlying economics of productivity determinants that to base a Greenbook
forecast on an assumption of accelerating productivity seems to me a rather risky bet. Sorting out
what is temporary and what is permanent is a very difficult problem, and for the most part with
productivity we are just extracting observations from the recent past. To project ever-increasing
productivity could, in my view, mislead us. That is all I want to say at this point.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not surprisingly, in many respects recent
developments in our District are very similar to those Mike Moskow reported for his District. I
won't cover them in detail because many of my remarks would be a repetition of what he already
said. The most commented-on development in the District in the last couple of months has been the
slowing in the motor vehicle sector, with the decline in large truck production most pronounced.

48
Parts suppliers and trucking companies are reporting substantial declines in new orders. Some are
saying orders are down 50 percent. So, some workers have already been laid off and, more
importantly, additional layoffs are expected. Layoffs have not yet occurred in auto assembly plants,
but overtime work for autoworkers has largely disappeared in the District.
Residential construction activity has declined, most noticeably in the low- and moderateincome range. Within the District, building in western Pennsylvania is holding up best--maybe
because that region was lagging earlier--whereas contacts from a number of metro areas in Ohio and
Kentucky have reported what they consider to be overbuilding. Commercial real estate construction
is said to have slowed to a more sustainable pace. Both developers and bankers claim that during the
course of the past year a pronounced element of caution and restraint has crept into their previous
optimism about new developments and new projects. They claim that the bankers have really
tightened conditions by demanding more equity in any new project that is about to get under way.
So, the real estate professionals believe that widespread overbuilding has not occurred in the District.
Bankers assert that the pipeline of new loans is starting to empty out. And the bankers on our boards
of directors say that they are revising downward their projections of earning asset growth for the
balance of this year, and their expectation is that it will be soft next year.
With increasing frequency we hear from manufacturing companies located in the District
that their optimism about the prospects for exports pretty much balances out their more pessimistic
view about domestic demand. As I reflected on some of the comments that we were hearing from
these companies, what was noticeably absent--but I didn't think to ask about it at the time--was
concern about competitiveness. There was no suggestion or hint that the value of the dollar or
exchange rate levels or anything like that was influencing their ability to sell. Their comments

49
mainly were about how strong these foreign economies are going to be and how much of the market
their firms could service.
Reports about retail spending have fluctuated widely in the last couple of months. The
only thing that seems clear about the retail sector is that the uniformly strong reports that we were
hearing earlier have stopped. The one sector where labor market conditions continue to be very tight
or even tighter is health care. Contacts in the health care field say that they are telling employers to
expect several years of double-digit increases in the cost of their medical plans. A disturbing trend is
that smaller employers report that they are offering young workers the option of higher wages in
exchange for forgoing any medical coverage.
At a recent small business advisory council meeting almost all participants said that they
expect inflation over the next two years to be somewhat higher than it has been on balance in the
past couple of years. Most apparently felt that wage and benefit costs would rise more rapidly, but
on other issues their views were somewhat divided. Some suggested that continued productivity
gains would keep pace with these higher labor costs. Others suggested that their earnings were
going to be under pressure because productivity would not keep up. And they were equally split on
whether or not they could be successful in passing along unavoidable cost increases, mainly labor
costs, to their customers.
Turning to national and international prospects, I always look forward to the meeting after
this one each year because that is when the staff adds another year to the forecast horizon. I don't
underestimate at all how difficult that is, but to me two years or so is the right horizon to be thinking
about in terms of the current stance of policy or even possible near-term policy actions. I think it is
important to get us thinking about what kind of environment we're going to face in the year after
next year. It is sobering and humbling to think back to the August meeting two years ago--when the

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Russians were in the process of defaulting that very day--and what we went through in the
subsequent two years to get to where we are today. We have seen oil prices at $10 or $12; we've
seen oil prices at $30-plus. We've seen developments in credit markets and foreign exchange
markets that none of us would have been able to forecast, let alone be sure about what the right
policy response should have been. So, I think we have to be very open to the idea that there will be a
lot of unexpected events. My own view is that these surprises are more likely to be on the
international than the domestic front over the next two-year horizon.
Three months ago, when we last raised rates, I would have put Mexico very high up on
my list of worries. Now, three months later--and maybe I'm just being totally naïve--the situation
there seems to have changed dramatically for the better and I would put it well down on my list of
worries. But I could be wrong. We may get through the inauguration of their new president and a
transition and find out that something was there that we couldn’t see. But when I look around
elsewhere for things to worry about that may be different in ways that I could not possibly imagine, I
think the domestic fiscal side is going to be different. And the report I read last night about how to
think about U.S. fiscal policy alternatives did not comfort me. I believe the fiscal stance we have
had recently of increasing government savings has been stimulative to at least one sector of the
United State’s economy, the investment sector. I find it difficult to think about increased spending,
reduced tax revenues, and smaller surpluses or even deficits as being stimulative in an overall sense.
It may be toward certain parts of the economy, but I can't think of it as being stimulative to the
business investment sector. So, over the coming two-year horizon it seems to me that we have to be
willing to think about fiscal impulses more flexibly than what was suggested in the material I was
reading last night.

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When I look at the issue that was raised earlier about Japan and the concern there, we
know that something is going to happen in the next 2 to 2-1/2 years. I don’t know what baseline
assumption we should make, but something is going to happen. Politically it is already starting.
How fast it will go is anybody's guess. Anybody's is better than mine! We know that developments
in Europe are going to be quite different than they have been in the past. The launch of the euro in
currency form a year from December will be a very significant landmark development if it happens,
or even if it doesn't. And to get from here to there what has to be done in Germany, Belgium, Italy-in a lot of these countries--could be socially and politically very, very divisive and difficult. As I
said, I don't know what the right assumption is to make. But I think it would be useful to the
Committee in our October meeting, when we look out through the end of 2002, for the staff to
consider a wide array of possible events and assign some probabilities to them, and see where we
come out on them. We ought to be prepared to be flexible and humble about our ability to forecast
what is going to happen over the next two years.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Santomero.
MR. SANTOMERO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the Philadelphia District business
conditions have been mixed recently, with improvements in some sectors and slowing in others. In
many respects District developments are similar to what we have heard around the table this
morning but with some interesting differences.
The pace of manufacturing activity has picked up after a two-month pause. On the other
hand, recreation and tourism has remained strong as summer spending has hit the region. Certainly
the hotels in the region got a boost from the political convention, filling them to capacity. But in fact
the evidence is broader than that about a good season for our recreational areas. Growth in retail
sales in the region has flattened out this summer, although discount stores and specialty stores did

52
better than department stores. And most auto dealers in the region indicated that sales have slowed
this month. On the construction side, residential, commercial, and public construction activity,
although still strong, has been somewhat reduced in strength over the last several months. The
number of new construction projects coming into the pipeline is beginning to decline. And industry
contacts report that while vacancy rates are low and real estate prices and rents are rising, there has
been a lot of caution, particularly in our urban centers, again noting Philadelphia in that mix.
Bank lending continues to rise moderately, but with some slowing on the consumer side,
including residential lending and non-credit-card consumer spending in general. Business lending
continues to be strong, however. Labor markets remain tight, with our region's unemployment rate
slightly below the nation’s in the most recent months, and that is unusual. But reports of outsized
increases in wages and signing bonuses seem to have become less widespread than earlier this year.
More retailers in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania more generally are reporting that they are seeing
increased costs and are passing them on in the retail network. That's not true, however, on the
manufacturing side. Our business outlook survey in August still shows a very high index for prices
paid by manufacturers, but the survey indicates that the index of prices received by manufacturers
declined this month to its lowest level for the year. The manufacturers are still having difficulty
passing on input costs to final customer prices. Businesses and banks generally expect moderate
growth for the remainder of the year.
Turning to the nation, we too see mixed signals in the recent national economic data. On
balance these data suggest to us a moderation in the pace of final demand that is moving the
economy toward a more sustainable growth path. Even though the economy remains strong and the
labor market remains tight, recent consumer and producer price measures indicate that inflationary
pressures are not as strong as they were in the first quarter. I also note with interest the Greenbook's

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latest upward revisions in the trend growth of productivity and potential GDP. I do think that the
outlook for core inflation is not as worrisome as it looked several months ago when I was first
deciding on this position. I also am encouraged by the fact that longer-term expected inflation has
been quite stable, as indicated in the release of our Federal Reserve Bank survey of professional
forecasters and the Michigan survey. The stability of these measures of long-term expected inflation
suggests that people believe that the FOMC will keep inflation under control and leads me to
conclude that the Fed is not behind the curve in this regard.
In sum, signs of slower growth are encouraging, especially since we have not yet seen the
full effect of the increases in the fed funds rate and the discount rate that have already been put in
place over the last year. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Vice Chair.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Recent indicators
suggest that economic growth in the Second District has slowed since the last report. Price pressures
persist but have yet to show up in any broad-based measure of consumer prices. Unemployment
rates in the District were mixed in July, rising from 3.4 percent to 3.7 percent in our part of New
Jersey, but falling from 4.5 percent to 4.2 percent in the State of New York. Total payroll
employment was pulled down by declines in the public sector, reflecting both a winding down of the
2000 Census and a substantial drop-off in summer jobs programs throughout the state.
In the private sector, job growth has moderated a bit in recent months. In July private
sector employment grew at a 1.1 percent annual pace; that is down from 1.8 percent in the second
quarter and 2.1 percent in the first quarter. Most retailers indicate that overall sales continue to run
somewhat below plans since the last report. Our contacts report that an unseasonably cool summer-actually we didn't have to talk to our contacts to find that out [laughter]--has held down sales of

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summer wear and air conditioners, leading to some buildup of inventories and very steep
markdowns.
The District's real estate markets have been mixed, with signs of slowing in the residential
sector. But in the commercial sector New York City's shortage of office space shows no signs of
abating, with rents continuing to spiral upward. Midtown Manhattan's office availability rate was
little changed at an extraordinarily low 3.4 percent at the end of July; downtown’s rate was steady at
5-1/2 percent. Both of those figures are less than half of what they were just a year ago. Not
surprisingly the surge in asking rents has been stunning. They have been rising at an annual rate of
nearly 50 percent over the past three months and are roughly 30 percent higher than at this time last
year. Most of the leasing activity is reported to be coming from the high-tech, financial, and
telecommunications sectors. In residential housing, there is a definite slowdown around the District
in general. In upscale Manhattan, that is mainly reflected in the fact that bidding wars are less
frequent and upscale apartments stay on the market for as long as three weeks instead of about three
minutes as was the case about six months ago.
The regional purchasing managers’ survey suggests continued improvement in business
conditions in July and some moderation in price pressures. The consumer price index for
metropolitan New York City rose 3.1 percent over the 12 months ended in July, which is slightly
higher than at the end of June when it was up 2.9 percent. The rise mainly reflects a sharp increase
in energy prices. Electricity costs in New York City and the lower Hudson Valley surged in July,
with the average customer’s bill up 43 percent from a year earlier. Given that July of 1999 was, I
believe, one of the hottest on records and July of this year one of the coolest, one can imagine how
large the increase was per BTU. Loan demand in the District is slacking off somewhat. So, in
general there is a feel that the economy in the District is still pretty robust but slowing somewhat.

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On the national level, recent data indicate that growth of consumer spending has
moderated, while housing starts and sales are declining. For the second half of 2000 we expect
growth to average about 4 percent, down from 5 percent in the first half. We continue to expect
some further slowing of growth in 2001 to around 3-1/2 percent, largely because we think there is a
fair amount of monetary policy tightening still in the pipeline. The continued acceleration in
productivity growth has led us to adjust upward once again our estimate of the economy's potential.
We now have it at 4-1/2 percent. With growth substantially below potential over the forecast
horizon, we expect the unemployment rate to begin rising later this year, eventually reaching about
4-1/2 percent by the end of 2001. That has led to a significant scaling back of the projected rise of
core inflation in our forecast. We now have it at 2.6 percent Q4-Q4 for 2001, down a full 1/2
percentage point from our forecast in June. Although growth appears to be moderating and the
continued acceleration of productivity has damped inflation projections, we think the balance of
risks continues to be in the direction of concern about inflation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Ferguson.
MR. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At our last meeting we decided to wait
and see whether the 175 basis points of tightening that we had put in place was having the desired
effect on the economy. I believe the incoming data, as others have suggested, are generally
supportive of the wisdom of that posture and do suggest some slowing is in train. Clearly, the
interest-sensitive sectors have shown some noticeable slowing. More broadly, it seems as though the
job market has gone from super hot to what I would describe as sort of warm. The pace of job
growth seems to have slowed from about 240,000 per month during the first four months of the year
to an average of about 125,000 during the more recent four months. And finally, the data suggest

56
that businesses are boosting inventories, which might be an indication that perhaps demand is not
topping supply.
If one takes a longer perspective, I am fairly comfortable, as others also have indicated,
with the change that the staff has introduced with respect to productivity growth. I come to that
view for a number of different reasons. First, output of and investment in information
communication technologies continue to be the most robust portions of GDP growth. Secondly, I
too have had some conversations with people from Silicon Valley who have worked very hard to
convince me that more is still to come on the productivity front, as a few of the presidents have
mentioned. Obviously we will have to wait to see if that is the case. Thirdly, venture capital funds
still seem to be flowing into these newer areas, suggesting that the investment community is also
noticing that something special is going on there and they continue to be supportive of it.
The staff has worked fairly hard to inform us of the risks surrounding this assumption, and
I think at least one other person has mentioned that. But, like the staff, I also note that the equity
markets have been rising gradually in the recent past as opposed to at a torrid pace, and so perhaps
the wealth effect is not feeding demand as strongly as it had been before.
Finally, looking to market data, based on the 10-year TIPS it seems as though
expectations in the market with respect to inflation are relatively subdued, and I think that is also
good news. Having said that, I agree with others that the risks still continue to be mainly on the up
side, and I’d cite two or three reasons for that. First, obviously, consumers are confident and labor
markets continue to be tight by historical standards. Secondly, in that context, I do note that some
analysts think the recent slowdown in private employment growth might be attributable not to an
easing in labor demand but rather to a tightening of labor supply constraints. They support that
contention by the fact that much of the slowdown in growth has come not from interest-sensitive

57
goods-producing sectors but rather from the services sector. But when one looks behind that, one
sees that where the growth has been slow is in the services sector and in FIRE, which obviously
includes real estate, and also in the personnel supply sectors. So, that strikes me as a bit mixed. I
might also say in this vein that the ECI obviously should have given us some pause, but I think the
staff is right in suggesting that perhaps some of that is simply a reflection that this increase in
productivity is being shared with labor as well as with capital.
A more serious concern with respect to the inflation outlook, it seems to me, is that
financial conditions have in fact eased a little since our last meeting. Real interest rates fell over the
intermeeting period, and indeed real interest rates for investment-grade borrowers appear to be up
only about 1 percentage point since May 1999. So, in some sense our credibility, if you will, is
leading perhaps to a bit of leakage in our efforts with respect to tightening. However, my concern
about accommodative financial conditions is tempered a bit by the fact that net borrowings from
nonfinancial businesses appear to have slowed in July from the rapid pace of the second quarter.
Also, at least compared to June, the composition of that borrowing has shifted back to banks, and
banks are reporting a tightening of standards and a firming of terms on business loans. And, as a
few of you have indicated, it may well be that the demand for loans is skewing back.
Finally, I think we should note that there has been in this meeting and certainly in others
some discussion of the NAIRU. And on that topic I’d like to share an observation from a wellinformed citizen about what she described as the “Nehru.” This was in fact my wife. She wants to
know why this Committee continues to focus so much on the style of a man’s jacket that was only
popular for a few years in the 1960s. [Laughter] I said to her that some economic questions really
can not be answered! But in a more serious vein, it does suggest that those who want to couch their

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analysis in the terms of the NAIRU clearly have an extra strong burden of communication. Thank
you very much.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Gramlich.
MR. GRAMLICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Usually at these meetings we are
appropriately forward-looking, but today I would like to try something different. I want to look back
into the past to see if we can learn anything, and in my comments I am going to refer to a table that
is being passed around. 2
The great American inflation started in mid-to-late 1966. While policymakers and
analysts did not have a core PCE index at the time, we can construct one in hindsight. It shows that
the core PCE was quite stable until the first part of 1966 before beginning a stair-step upward pattern
where it rose for a while, stabilized, and rose more before the climb eventually ended in double-digit
levels. Other indicators of inflation that were then available followed a roughly similar pattern.
We know from Orphanides’ work that both policymakers and analysts generally felt that
the unemployment rate target--in deference to Governor Ferguson’s wife, this was before the
NAIRU concept was invented--was around 4 percent. Basically, policymakers felt the NAIRU was
4 percent; it turned out to be a lot higher, and policy proved to be excessively expansionary. One
could make a superficial comparison to today. Today the FOMC is behaving as if NAIRU is around
4 percent despite warnings that it is higher from the Greenbook, from some private economists, and
indeed from some members of this Committee. The question then becomes whether the FOMC
might now be making the same mistake that it made back in the 1960s. I for one have consistently
had private guilt feelings that we could be. Hence I want to look backwards and see what the
evidence says.
2

A copy of the table used by Mr. Gramlich is appended to this transcript. (Appendix 2)

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The table that you should have by now gives some numbers that compare the change in
various key inflation indicators between early 1965 and late 1966 in the first column and between
Q2 1999 and Q2 2000 in the second column. In making this comparison I do not mean to criticize
the FOMC of the 1960s. We have several important advantages today: We have better diagnostic
data, we have fiscal policy working to fight inflation, and we don't have presidential criticism of
interest rate increases. I make this comparison simply to examine similarities and differences from
the earlier period when we know that inflation took off.
The table suggests the following: In the earlier period the core PCE, which as I said has
been reconstructed from hindsight, went up by about a point in about a year’s time. Now it has risen
by just one-third of that. We have discussed the reasons for the recent rise, and at least at this point I
think there is agreement that relatively little of this rise reflects true acceleration. Unit labor costs
rose sharply in the earlier period largely because of a sharp rise in wages. Productivity actually went
up slightly at that time. In the recent period, we know that unit labor costs have been dropping, with
a slight rise in wages more than offset by a sharp rise in productivity. In the Michigan survey 1-year
inflation expectations rose by two points in the earlier period and by one-fifth of that now. But even
these 1-year expectations could be misleading for the recent period because long-term 10-year
inflation expectations have been very stable, a series that was not available back then. Nominal 10year Treasury rates rose by 8 basis points then and 20 basis points now. But a more meaningful
measure is the spread between nominal and real 10-year yields, up just 10 basis points in the recent
period. Again this nominal-real spread could not be measured back in the mid-1960s. This
backward look shows that in many respects the earlier period looked just as one would expect in a
world where inflation was gradually increasing.

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In each of these respects, the recent period looks very different. The FOMC may be
making a mistake now. We obviously can’t yet claim the contrary, but the risk that inflation is
accelerating seems far less now than it did back in 1966. My policy advice follows from this
analysis. Our earlier rate increases, along with other factors, seem to have slowed the growth of
aggregate demand to roughly acceptable levels. Whether we should be tightening further depends
on whether we think the unemployment rate is below NAIRU or that product and goods markets are
too tight. Markets clearly seem to have been too tight in the mid-1960s. If we should see evidence
indicating that situation now, in anything like the form that existed during the mid-1960s, I’d be the
first in line to argue for tightening policy. But at this point I feel the evidence is simply not there.
For now, as at the last meeting, I’m comfortable just watching the situation until we see more
evidence that inflation is accelerating. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Meyer.
MR. MEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m going to focus my remarks this morning
entirely on productivity, specifically on the implications for the outlook of the apparent further
acceleration in structural productivity growth. If I had a title, I think it would be “In Celebration of
Accelerating Productivity.” I’m going to use a handout a little later in my remarks--or at least the
first two pages of my handout--but please, no peeking yet!

3

As it turns out, I’m going to respond directly to Governor Ferguson who said that those of
us who characterize our views of the economic outlook and challenges for monetary policy in terms
of NAIRU have a very heavy burden in terms of communication. I think he’s absolutely correct.
And I rise to the challenge! [Laughter] To me the most important developments since our last
meeting were the revisions to the path of productivity over the last several quarters and the higher3

A copy of the material used by Mr. Meyer is appended to this transcript. (Appendix 3)

61
than-expected value of productivity in the second quarter. Likewise, the most important parts of the
revisions to the Greenbook forecast for me related to productivity. They were the upward revision to
the assumption about structural productivity growth and the interesting decision to build into the
forecast a further acceleration in structural productivity, as implied by the capital deepening path
associated with the staff forecast.
Now, I think President Poole made a very worthwhile point about the need for caution in
extrapolating productivity acceleration going forward. But I rather like what the staff did in this case
because it made their forecast more internally consistent. They have a path of capital spending; they
have an assumption about capital deepening. And what they really did was to endogenize their
projection of productivity to keep it consistent with the capital deepening going on in the model.
Still, as others have pointed out, it probably would be useful to have alternative scenarios with
different productivity paths since this is so very important to the outlook.
Let me now turn to an interpretation of the Greenbook forecast. What is happening in this
forecast is that the staff has revised upward the path of both actual and potential GDP growth by
about the same amount, preserving almost the same unemployment path as it had last time. But
inflation is lower as a result of the impact of a further acceleration in productivity on inflation, an
effect I want us to focus on in a minute. The picture is clearly bright. We have higher growth and
lower inflation than in the previous forecast. But what is also important is that the Greenbook has
preserved the qualitative story of the last Greenbook and previous Greenbooks, and that is that the
unemployment rate is still below the staff’s estimate of what I’m going to refer to as the short-run or
effective NAIRU. And as a result, there is upward pressure on inflation due to tight labor markets,
though less so than would otherwise be the case because of the acceleration of productivity. Indeed,
over the next year and a half, the dissipation of the secondary effects of energy costs on core

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inflation just offsets the upward pressure that demand is exerting on it, leaving the core rate about
unchanged. But thereafter core inflation would begin to rise in a longer-run forecast. We would see
that, for example, in the five-year and longer kinds of projections like those we had in the Bluebook
at the meeting last time. And over the still longer run, as the short-run NAIRU converges to the
long-run NAIRU, there could still be more rapid increases in inflation unless and until supply and
demand were rebalanced.
I think the keys to understanding the role of productivity in the forecast have to do with
two fundamental issues. One is the effect of productivity on aggregate demand as well as aggregate
supply. We know that the staff has argued, I think persuasively, that over the last four years the
increase in productivity has actually increased demand by more than supply, resulting in the decline
in the unemployment rate that we’ve seen. They make a break from that approach in this forecast by
moving to balanced increases in demand and potential supply. That, I think, is supported by the
more modest tone of the economic indicators and by the relatively subdued path of equity prices
recently. But we have an important element here of upside risk because we certainly could get a
repetition of the pattern we have had over the last four years, in that each acceleration of productivity
actually brought with it even sharper increases in demand.
The second effect is the one I particularly want to focus on, and that is the temporary
disinflationary impetus that comes whenever we have an acceleration in productivity. Now, we are
only beginning to learn about the complex dynamics associated with an increase in productivity
growth. First of all, there is not even widespread consensus about the framework that I’m going to
be using here, though it is implicit in the staff forecast as well. But we really don’t have a lot of
historical data from which to learn about the impact of adjusting to big increases in productivity. We
had the big decline in productivity in the 1970s and we have this recent experience with acceleration

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in productivity, and that’s it. We have very few data points. So, there’s a lot of uncertainty about
how it all works out.
What I want to focus on, then, is the power and persistence of the temporary
disinflationary effect associated with the acceleration in structural productivity. Let’s look at that
first term on the first page of the handout. What I identify there is the effect on inflation of an
acceleration of productivity as being related to this term: the difference between q, which is the
actual trend productivity now--for example, 3-1/2 percent in the staff forecast--and q*, which is a
moving average of trend productivity. The key in this analysis is that wages respond more slowly to
increases in trend productivity than prices, and this gap reflects that difference. The q* is a moving
average of that trend in productivity, which reflects the slower impact on wages. As a result of this
asymmetric response of wages and prices, an acceleration of productivity temporarily lowers
inflation. And that exact term shows up in the price specification of the Phillips curve if there is an
asymmetric response of wages and prices to inflation. Just to give you an idea of how powerful this
might be, take a look at the second page where I plotted out that term--the difference between trend
productivity and a moving average of trend productivity. I based the estimate of the moving average
on a 40-quarter moving average. I picked that particular length because that’s the specification the
staff uses in solving their wage equations and they found that that works relatively well. What we
see here is that because we have such a long lag length, the increases in productivity that we’ve seen
cumulate; they don’t dissipate. They are still cumulating and getting to the highest impact we’ve
seen. This term is now 1-1/2 percentage points; that says that the acceleration of productivity is now
responsible for about a 1-1/2 percentage lower inflation rate than we otherwise would have had.
You don’t have to turn to the mathematical derivations on the third page unless you are a
glutton for punishment, but the estimation is all worked out there in gory detail. But I think it

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probably overstates the disinflationary impact for a couple of reasons. One, there is a good reason to
believe, or I think it is plausible, that part of this acceleration of productivity would be absorbed by
firms through a higher profit share during this period. So, not all of this acceleration is passed on in
the form of lower prices. Secondly, it’s very hard to estimate the lag here. Some equations, in
particular those in the FRBUS model, have a shorter lag. To approximate this effect in that model
would involve a lag of about 3 years as opposed to 10 years. And if that were the case, it would cut
this disinflationary effect by about two-thirds. It would only be about ½ percentage point.
So, it seems to me that this framework helps to explain why an acceleration in
productivity temporarily lowers inflation for a given unemployment rate while preserving the role of
balance between supply and demand in labor markets as an important force in inflation dynamics-indeed, the importance of the long-run NAIRU once q* converges back to q. What it suggests to me
is that this further acceleration in productivity is definitely a powerful force holding down inflation
relative to what it otherwise would be. I think the staff forecast of about-stable core inflation
through next year and an upward creep after that makes a lot of sense. And it suggests that we might
have somewhat more time in terms of dealing with the day of reckoning. But we have to be mindful
that the unemployment rate might still be below the short-run NAIRU here and that ultimately these
demand pressures will become more meaningful should we get a convergence of the short-run
NAIRU back to the long-run NAIRU once productivity growth stabilizes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Kelley.
MR. KELLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize that I have no handout, [laughter]
but I’ll try to make up for it by being brief. The incoming data that we’ve been reviewing all
morning really need no repetition and I would only add that on balance they seem benign and
favorable to a truly remarkable degree. It may be a midsummer night’s dream but I think the recent

65
data could contain the seeds of a near-utopian extension of our recent superb era. If a modest
downturn does set in for an extended period, productivity improvements could continue to hold unit
labor costs flat. And if we have the good fortune to avoid the potential negative shocks from both
known and unforeseen sources, the stage would be set: We would experience sustainable growth,
higher real incomes, slower but continuing job creation, and steady, perhaps at some point receding,
inflation. The only other thing one could ask for is major league baseball in Washington!
[Laughter]
That is an enticing but quite plausible prospect to be sure, but it would be folly to adopt it
as a locked-in scenario and I would not suggest that we do so. The real world is still a difficult and
challenging place. Inflation is creeping up, the current account deficit does continue to grow, the
stock market and consumer debt are dangerously high, and household savings are dangerously low.
Hot spots, both economic and political, do glow threateningly around the world. And the favorable
outcome relies almost entirely on a continuation of productivity increases unprecedented in recent
decades. If all this were not so serious and important, and if this Committee were not so squarely in
the middle of the vortex, it would all be great theatre. At any rate, to wait and to watch intensively
seems the best posture for today.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Thank you. Shall we adjourn for coffee, which I think
we’ve all earned?
[Coffee break]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Mr. Kohn.
MR. KOHN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As many of you have remarked,
incoming data since your last meeting have tended to reinforce the sense that
the growth rates of final demand and the economy’s ability to meet that demand
are much more closely aligned and are likely to stay that way, at least for a
while. On the demand side, consumption is growing at a slower pace and

66
homebuilding is declining, even before the full effects have been felt of earlier
tightening in financial conditions, including the leveling out of broad measures
of equity prices this year. On the supply side of the economy, a higher
estimated growth rate of potential means that demand need not decelerate as
much to achieve that alignment. From this evidence, it would appear that the
cumulative effects of your prior actions may well have tightened financial
conditions enough to keep the unemployment rate from falling further, even
taking account of the partial erosion of restraint from the recent rally in
domestic financial markets.
At the same time, the new information on prices and costs, on balance, has
not indicated any further intensification of underlying inflation pressures. While
these data may make you a little more comfortable with the determination that
unemployment rates near 4 percent can persist for a while longer without serious
adverse consequences, they have not helped greatly in knowing whether such
rates are sustainable over the longer run. Labor compensation has run to the
strong side of expectations, but so too has productivity, so that faster increases in
real compensation have not put added pressure on unit costs and prices. Price
data have tended to confirm that core inflation rates are a little higher than a year
ago, though by less than anticipated by the staff, at least in the case of the PCE
chain price index. Moreover, the pickup in core inflation is small enough to
leave ambiguous the judgment as to whether it is attributable to the indirect
effects of energy price increases or labor market disequilibrium. And long-run
inflation expectations continue to be stable, or, on market-based measures, have
even declined a bit. With inflation and inflation expectations not worsening, and
growth in demand near that of potential supply, the Committee might see little
potential cost to keeping policy unchanged at this meeting. And waiting would
yield benefits, as new information accrued to help assess the underlying forces,
especially those working on the course of prices.
Such a decision would still leave open the question of the risks going
forward to be characterized in your press release. Most market commentators
expect you to stay with the bias toward inflation risks. But that may be partly
because they are assuming you would want to avoid the attention and market
reaction that a shift might bring. The flat yield curve and pattern of futures rates
imply that the buyers and sellers of securities see at least as much chance that
your next policy action will be an easing in rates as a tightening. With inflation
compensation in the real-nominal Treasury yield spread below current increases
in the CPI--even below those in core CPI prices--investors would not seem to be
anticipating that keeping policy on hold would pose an inflation risk. And, high
levels of equity prices and expected earnings growth and a low implied equity
premium would suggest that investors do not anticipate that a much softer
economy and appreciable rise in the unemployment rate will be necessary to
achieve that outcome.

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If the Committee, like the markets, saw the recent data as supporting
judgments that the current unemployment rate might well be sustainable--and
was now likely to persist without further policy tightening--it might want to
consider shifting to a statement indicating that the risks to satisfactory economic
performance were now balanced. The staff forecast suggests economic
expansion is likely to proceed a bit below the now-higher growth of the
economy’s potential for some time even with the federal funds rate at its present
level over the rest of the year. And the Committee might see the recent
information on labor costs as consistent with little pressure on inflation “in the
foreseeable future,” especially if energy prices retrace a portion of their runup
and the dollar remains strong as investments in the United States retain their
attractiveness in an environment of strengthening productivity. But you may
also want to consider that a statement that the risks were balanced would
certainly surprise the commentators and likely boost prices in capital markets, at
least a little. Although no policy firmings are built into those prices, a statement
of balanced risks still would be taken as reducing the probability of further
increases in interest rates.
With demand still quite strong in a number of sectors, the Committee might
not want to take the chance that its announcement would further fuel the recent
runup in stock and bond prices. Moreover, there are a number of reasons to
believe that the risks going forward still point toward higher inflation. In the
staff forecast, of course, taken as a whole, they do. Inflation picks up a little next
year in that forecast by some measures; and even with an additional 75 basis
points of tightening, conditions at the end of the period point to still further
acceleration of prices. Even if the Committee did not agree with the staff
assessment that unemployment rates needed to rise appreciably, its actions this
year to slow the growth of demand indicate that it sees unemployment rates in
the low 4s as near the lower end of possible equilibrium levels, and the risks of
rising inflation as especially unbalanced at the prevailing degree of labor
resource utilization. In addition, the current rate of core consumer inflation may
now be closer to the upper end of what the Committee considers to be
compatible with its price stability objective. In that case, the Committee might
be inclined to consider the cost of any further increase to be particularly high.
To be sure, the standard balance of risks statement addresses the direction of
future inflation, not its level. But a higher level might suggest more weight on
any possibility of further increases, even if such a possibility were relatively
small.
As Dave Stockton explained, in the staff forecast the trajectory of price
acceleration has been marked down, largely based on a reassessment of
productivity growth. However, the nature of the change may imply that the risks
to inflation around this revision are not symmetric. On the supply side, the
further pickup in productivity damps price increases through the forecast period
by offsetting much of the effects on business costs of worker efforts to catch up
to previous productivity increases and pressures from tight labor markets. On

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the demand side, though, households and businesses are assumed to have already
built the productivity acceleration into expected growth of earnings and income.
As a consequence, they have also incorporated the associated rise in the
equilibrium real interest rate into bond yields, and the Federal Reserve has
validated that increase with its monetary policy. Hence, in the forecast the
feedthrough of higher potential output to demand is less than it otherwise would
have been. The drop in real interest rates and relatively small size of the rebound
in equity prices since mid-May supports the notion that it is the economists, not
the markets, that are getting positive surprises on productivity. Of late, earnings
warnings from firms have contributed to lower profit projections by analysts for
the balance of this year and 2001, though to be sure, their long-term forecasts
continue to edge higher.
Thus, the new staff assessment embodies two risks that both point in the
direction of the possibility of higher inflation than in the forecast. First, if
additional productivity growth gains are not forthcoming, cost pressures from the
catch-up in real wages and tight labor markets would raise costs faster and
squeeze profits. Second, if not all of the higher productivity growth rate is
currently built into market interest rates and earnings expectations, then more
increases in equity prices may be in store, working to strengthen demand and
tighten labor markets. There are other upside risks as well, even apart from the
level of the NAIRU and the effects of productivity gains. For example, a
stubbornly high price of oil could begin to affect inflation expectations.
The new press statement language is about longer-term risks to meeting the
FOMC’s objectives. The former language involving asymmetries concerned the
probabilities of near-term action--over the intermeeting period and at the next
meeting or so. Even if the Committee were of the view that it was unlikely to get
enough new information about inflation prospects to justify a policy action in the
next few months, it should still adopt the biased statement language if it believes
that over time rising inflation poses a greater peril to economic performance than
weakness in economic activity.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Questions for Don?
MR. JORDAN. A couple of questions, if I might. I read in the Bluebook someplace,
though I can’t find it now--and I thought I heard you say it again in your briefing--a reference to the
declines in real rates as reflecting a reduced probability of the Fed tightening and raising the funds
rate. So, I look at the data and I say: Okay, 10-year yields have come down and other yields have
too, but 3-month rates went up. Well, the fed funds rate is a one-day rate. So I ask myself: Can I

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square those? If we attribute to the market an expectation that whatever inflationary impulse is in the
pipeline is very short term but not longer term, is that how we reconcile those?
MR. KOHN. The 3-month rates that went up were 3-month Treasury bill rates. Threemonth commercial paper and CD rates went down. And I think the Treasury bill market, with a
reduced supply, is subject these days to very idiosyncratic changes. Much of the specific reaction
relates to likely or possible changes in supply, as liquidity has been impaired. And in fact this
increase reverses a decrease that was difficult to understand and explain over the previous
intermeeting period. So I wouldn’t put any weight on a change in the 3-month Treasury bill rate
given the state of that market right now. I think every other interest rate that we look at, private
interest rates and even longer-term government interest rates, suggests that expectations about Fed
tightening have certainly come down, and that is probably partly some decline in real rates and partly
some reduction in inflation expectations.
MR. JORDAN. Okay. That leads me to another question. Some of your remarks about
the markets and what we can read into the markets and maybe learn from them, I interpret as saying
that there is increasing credibility in the marketplace attached to our commitment to avoiding a
sustained acceleration of inflation. A year or more ago, before our first rate increase in this series at
midyear last year, we heard a lot of commentary to the effect that inflation can no longer be a
problem because of the new economy--that the silicon chip prevents inflation. And that went along
with stories about the success of IPOs and equity prices and price/earnings ratios and so on. Now it
seems that if people are comfortable that inflation is not a problem, it is because the Fed is on the job.
To me there does seem to be, compared to a year ago, a big swing as to the reason given for why
inflation is not a problem. If that’s right and if that is built into what we’re seeing in the markets’
financial indicators, then what weight would you give to increased credibility of the FOMC? The

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reason I’m asking is because there is this phenomenon, at least theoretically, of the Friedman surge
effect or the Parker’s paradox effect--that with an increase in credibility of the commitment to fight
inflation, the demand to hold money balances relative to wealth or permanent income would be
higher. So the same money growth would be less expansionary than compared to a lower credibility
environment. And if there has been a shift over the last year toward more credibility attached to our
commitment to resist inflation, what weight would you give that in assessing the thrust of policy
actions?
MR. KOHN. I think the markets are looking at both their assessment of the underlying
supply and demand for goods and services and the Fed’s reaction. I personally don’t sense a sea
change in our credibility. I think our credibility has been building gradually for the last 20 years,
sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Over repeated episodes of the Committee keeping its eye on the
longer-run price stability goal and acting successfully and preemptively to achieve that, we have built
credibility. I would think that some more credibility has accrued to the Committee over the last year
because of its actions. But I also believe that the markets don’t see the underlying inflation risk. If
there were increased credibility but they saw an inflation risk or a strong growth risk, they might
assume that inflation would be low but that the Committee would be tightening interest rates a lot in
order to achieve that low inflation. But in fact they don’t have a tightening of interest rates--real
interest rates--built in at all. So it’s not just that they see inflation low; they see it low without any
FOMC action. Drawing on the recent experience of the last several years in which there hasn’t been
any rise in inflation at very low unemployment rates, and where productivity growth has continued to
hold down costs, they’ve basically projected a continuation of that experience out ahead. They don’t
see a need to tighten policy. So I don’t think it’s just credibility. Between the Greenbook and the
markets--in fact, between many economists and the markets--the underlying analysis is different. The

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markets are putting a lot of weight on their experience of the last few years, whereas the economists
are trying to sort through the shocks that might have produced that experience and are seeing some
risks that the markets don’t see.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Further questions for Don? If not, let me get started. I think
there is a fairly general consensus that we are observing a marked slowdown in the growth of
consumer demand after a very strong performance earlier this year. Motor vehicle sales clearly are
down, although the data for August, seasonally adjusted, were little changed from the July numbers.
Chain store sales have been quite weak recently, and the data that came out this morning show
significant weakness in mid-August. And in general we are seeing significant softness in all the
housing-related consumer goods markets.
One of the elements in our models on which we have very considerable difficulty getting a
good fix is the inventories of consumer goods held by households. Because those inventories tend to
behave very much like the inventories of steel, aluminum, and textiles in individual business
establishments, we would expect retail demand to soften in the event of a backup in inventories of
household goods. But, there just is no evidence of any satiation of consumer demand, especially
taking account of the fact that we as consumers spend an increasing proportion of our money on
impalpable services. Clearly, we can clog up our closets with clothes and our driveways with motor
vehicles, and our stock of appliances can simply get out of hand, which I can assure you is my current
situation. [Laughter] Nonetheless, I find new things on which to spend money all the time. Even so,
it remains true that to the extent we are still dealing to a significant degree with a goods-related
economy, the excess inventories in households are an important factor that is sometimes overlooked
when we evaluate the economic outlook.

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To be sure, our model does have an inventory adjustment process, and indeed we are
seeing that the stock of consumer goods--mainly, of course, durable goods--has been rising at a faster
pace per capita or per household than in the past. While that is not to say that consumer demand has
reached a point of saturation, history does suggest the existence of a cyclical adjustment process as
inventories go up. And as they go up at an excessively rapid pace, as they indeed have been doing for
the last number of years, there is a tendency for the rate of accumulation to slow. When that
slowdown occurs, it works its way back into the type of environment we currently are observing in
the consumer area. Clearly, the wealth effect is interrelated with this process.
It is difficult to judge the extent to which the sharp rise in energy prices has
effectively removed purchasing power from the marketplace. What we see at the end of the day is a
softened consumer sector whose growth rate is well below what it was earlier, but growth continues
nonetheless. There is no evidence of which I am aware that suggests the consumer is pulling back to
an extent that is potentially destabilizing for the economic outlook. As consumer and indeed housing
expenditures soften, there is a feedback into the intermediate products industries and the slowing
reported by an increasing number of such industries, which Mike Moskow mentioned earlier today, is
generally what one would expect under those conditions.
In complete contrast to developments in the consumer and housing sectors is what is going
on in the capital goods markets. Here what we are observing, as we have discussed on many
occasions previously, is a continuing increase in prospective rates of return on new capital equipment,
especially high-tech. There really is no low-tech equipment anymore. There is no old-fashioned type
of capital equipment worth its name. As a consequence we are beginning to see a spillover from the
SIC classifications, which is how we often designate high technology. In any event, overall capital
investment continues to boom, an indication obviously that the expected rates of return, which had

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previously been presumed to be on the rise, actually have materialized. We can see that in two ways.
One is that plant managers are continuously ordering an ever-increasing menu of these types of
equipment, which means they are seeing that it works. We obviously are seeing the same
phenomenon in the productivity data, which effectively are one way to envisage the real return on
capital. And indeed we are seeing it in still increasing long-term earnings forecasts by security
analysts. As I have mentioned before, the latter may not be very knowledgeable about what is going
on in the business world, but they are reasonably good reporters of what the companies that they
follow are saying about their longer-term outlooks. That invariably means that productivity in the
individual companies is showing continued and irreversible increases. At some point, perhaps not
that far down the road, that is going to change. Indeed, it invariably must change because the history
of these types of technological surges or shifts in technology S-curves shows that they lose
momentum after a point. For example, once the availability and use of electricity became pervasive
throughout the economy, its rate of growth slowed quite appreciably. In fact, it slowed to such an
extent that new generating plants were not built as needed, and we can observe the problems that have
resulted from that.
At the moment, however, what we see is a quite extraordinary surge in capital investment
whose direct impact on productivity involves a fairly straightforward relationship with a lag. The
analytical problem that exists when we have this type of productivity-driven economy is that it is by
no means clear whether the increased capital investment will create a larger expansion of demand
than potential supply.
There are two elements here. One is the time lag that exists between capital expenditures
and the completion of facilities and their operation at full potential. The other is the coefficient that
relates increases in capital stock to increases in capacity. As Larry Meyer pointed out, the evidence

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to date suggests that the overall impact of accelerating capital investment has been to increase
demand more than potential supply. The result, as we all have perceived, is that we have seen a
significant decline in the unemployment rate and a tightening of the labor markets. If this process
were to persist, it strikes me as pretty much inevitable that we would have to be continuously
tightening. This is because the excess of demand over supply of goods and services would reflect
itself in an excess of long-term credit demands versus long-term savings. Were that the case, real
long-term interest rates would be continuing to rise, but they are not. And the reason they are not is
that personal consumption expenditures and spending on housing have moderated, and that slowing
has helped to offset the very strong growth in capital expenditures. We don't know the eventual
extent of the slowdown. Most of you have indicated that even though consumer demand has indeed
slowed in your Districts, there is no evidence of any cumulative deterioration. Consumer confidence
clearly has not deteriorated. So what we are looking at may well be a pattern of slower growth in
household spending that could continue for a while yet. And so long as it continues, the pressure will
be off the markets.
The acceleration of price inflation is essentially still a forecast. Ned Gramlich's table
showed that the year-over-year PCE core is up only 0.3 percent. The July-over-July number is up a
little more, but most interestingly the rate of increase of core PCE inflation for the last three months
is, as I recall, only slightly higher than 1/2 percent at an annual rate. This is the lowest three-month
number that I have seen in the series going back a number of years. But as Bill Poole points out, we
may be missing the boat here by looking exclusively at the core rate when clearly energy prices are
moving.
The electric power shortage is a very serious problem, as those of you in the West
particularly know. Because demand for electricity had slipped for a while, new power plant

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construction came to a virtual halt, abetted by environmental controls or regulations and a number of
other obstacles that essentially dissuaded utility companies from building new power plants. So, we
have ended up with what is a really serious potential crisis.
The crude oil markets are also tightening up. There is not all that much excess crude
production capacity in the Gulf states, which is where almost all of it exists. Saudi Arabia has
perhaps 3 million barrels a day of additional capacity. Kuwait has some. Iraq has some. But it is by
no means clear what the inclination may be to produce and bring those crude supplies to market. As
a consequence, the steady underlying growth in crude demand is having an impact on prices. OPEC
production is lagging because it is very difficult for a country like Saudi Arabia, which has very
significant fiscal problems, to increase its oil output knowing its aggregate revenues could very well
fall as a consequence. Accordingly, as the Greenbook indicates, it is not clear that energy prices will
automatically come down. It is true that the exploration and development budgets of the major oil
companies have gone up very materially, and experience suggests that newer technologies have
enabled the takeout from existing wells to improve markedly. As a result, additional sources of nonOPEC crude will become available, but not to a substantial extent before another year or two. It is
hard to know what is going to happen before then.
Natural gas is a disaster waiting to happen. Here again, the earlier slowdown in demand
for power left natural gas prices at relatively modest levels. As a consequence drilling declined fairly
materially. And we are now in a position where the natural gas inventories in storage are about as
low as I remember them.
In sum, we have a situation where all three major sources of power are strained and
interacting on the prices of energy. In the circumstances, the notion of looking solely at core prices
may still be comforting but only up to a very limited point. The reason is that rising prices that

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ordinarily bring added supply forward clearly are working less than adequately to produce that result
in the energy sector currently. As a consequence, while inflation has not worsened materially in the
sense of a spillover of higher energy prices into core prices, that outcome is inevitable unless energy
prices start to come down. Energy remains a very fundamental part of the cost structure even though
admittedly very significantly less so than it used to be. But it is still significant enough to create a
problem if we suddenly get a major acceleration in energy prices, especially in crude oil prices.
Where all this leaves us, obviously, is with a slowing economy but clearly one that has
remarkably good characteristics of stability. The major excesses that we were all concerned about for
the last couple of years seem to be diminishing. The gap between aggregate supply and demand is
beginning to close. And indeed, the Greenbook forecast implies that that gap will narrow
considerably more over the next year and a half. We obviously have a significant amount of
monetary policy tightening still in the pipeline stemming from the policy moves that have been
implemented since June of last year, including several moves earlier this year. Clearly, by any
measure those policy actions could not yet have worked their way fully through the system. So we
are in a situation where a lot of things could be fairly significantly worse, but they are not. I conclude
from all of this that we ought to stay where we are. There is no need to move at this particular point.
At the same time, it would be highly risky in my judgment to depart from the bias that we used to call
“asymmetric toward tightening.” I still have not learned the language we are now using to describe
our policy bias! In any event, my cost-benefit analysis of where we are at this stage and where we
want to be leads me at least for now to a no change directive and retention of the statement that the
risks are toward higher inflation. I would like to put that out on the table for discussion. Vice Chair.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation. I
want to talk a bit about the balance of risks sentence we have been using in the press statement as

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opposed to the asymmetry language we previously had in the directive, and how much we have
benefited from that change. I think what we mainly have accomplished is to convince the
marketplace--and slowly the economists in the marketplace--that we are in fact looking over the
longer run and not from meeting to meeting. They are now convinced that the Federal Reserve is
looking at monetary policy as it affects the economy over a longer period of time. Therefore, the
balance of risks statement toward either inflation on one side or toward too weak an economy on the
other, I believe, has had a very considerable positive effect on our ability to carry out policy. It
certainly does not change the need for us to take action when action is appropriate.
There is, I think, a lingering debate within the Committee about what we need in order to
have high credibility. Basically, what I think we need is the reputation of having good judgment and
courage--the judgment to evaluate the risks in a reasonable way and to decide what is the right course
of action and then the courage to take the action. It is easy to make the right decision if it is perfectly
obvious what it is. That is never the case with us. We are always looking through a dark glass,
thinking about what is the best thing to do and then acting courageously to do it. In my view the
Committee has a very, very high reputation in that regard and it is something that is of immense
importance to us.
Today I think we clearly have to look at the economy in the way you have suggested. I
agree that maintaining the present stance of policy is appropriate and, certainly, we should continue to
reflect our view that the balance of risks is toward rising inflation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Hoenig.
MR. HOENIG. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation. I would say that policy
right now is tight and the issue is whether it ought to be tighter. We certainly can wait to see whether
that is the case. One comment on the bias: As a suggestion, I wonder if we should not consider

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taking out the lone reference to tight labor markets as the reason for our bias. I don't know that there
is a one-to-one mapping into inflation over the time horizon we have been talking about. Given your
comments, as well as those of others here today, it seems to me that we see other risks that are just as
important right now in leading us to this bias. I think they also ought to be considered, or certainly
that tight labor markets should not be given more consideration in our statement than these other
risks.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I can’t speak for everybody. I think we are moving in that
direction but I don't think we are there yet. I believe the labor market still is the overwhelming
problem but clearly less so proportionally than it was, certainly at the last meeting.
MR. HOENIG. In my view it is something we ought to consider as we go forward.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I think that is a valid issue to raise at the next meeting.
President Poole.
MR. POOLE. Mr. Chairman, when I went to the airport yesterday morning in Bozeman,
Montana to fly back to this meeting I was a little concerned about whether the flights would be
running on time. I asked the clerk whether I would be able to get back to Washington for this
meeting. I’m sure he did not know who I am but he said: “Tell Alan Greenspan to leave the
economy alone.” [Laughter] Apparently you agree and I support your recommendation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Guynn.
MR. GUYNN. Mr. Chairman, I’m comfortable with and support your recommendation.
Absent some big surprise, I think we have the luxury of letting this play out. I would just underscore
Bill McDonough's comments about not doing anything to detract from the notion that we are on
watch and are prepared to move when we need to.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Santomero.

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MR. SANTOMERO. I support your proposal not to change the fed funds rate and to retain
the statement that the balance of risks is on the side of higher inflation. I think we need more time to
see what is happening with the real economy. Nonetheless, the balance of risks appears to remain on
the side of higher inflation over the horizon. If the indicators of inflation point consistently toward
higher inflation, then we should respond, and I think we should remind the markets of our resolve in
that regard.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Mr. Chairman, I agree with your recommendation. I think this would be a
good time to leave the funds rate unchanged so that we can see how things unfold before considering
another tightening action. I also believe it is important to retain the statement adopted in June that the
balance of risks continues to be toward higher inflation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Meyer.
MR. MEYER. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation for no change in the funds
rate and to maintain the assessment that the risks are still unbalanced toward higher inflation. I just
want to give a perspective on the unbalanced risks issue.
Whenever we have an acceleration of productivity growth, we have the following choices:
We can take it for a while in temporarily higher output or we can take it in potentially permanently
lower inflation. I think so far what we have done is to take it all in the form of higher output. Core
CPI inflation today is exactly the same as it was at the end of 1995 on a methodologically consistent
basis. That is fine. But I would argue that we have to be particularly vigilant about an upward creep
in inflation going forward because once this productivity acceleration effect dissipates, inflation will
rise. And it is better if that rise takes place from a level closer to our long-run inflation objective than
from a level that has already drifted above it.

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The second reason is that an acceleration of productivity is the classic opportunity for
opportunistic disinflation. So, it does seem a little strange to allow an extraordinary experience of an
acceleration of productivity to be accompanied by an upward creep in inflation. For both those
reasons, I think we need to stay with the statement on unbalanced risks. I think they are unbalanced
and even though inflation performance remains very favorable, I believe we have to be very vigilant
about rising inflation going forward.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Broaddus.
MR. BROADDUS. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation, especially your
recommendation to keep the tilt in place. I think it would be premature to remove it. Also, Tom
Hoenig’s suggestion resonates with me and I hope we will look at that again in the near future.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Stern.
MR. STERN. I, too, support your recommendation, Mr. Chairman, including the bias
toward concerns about heightened inflation going forward. As I indicated earlier, I do think we have
some additional time to assess that situation, and given current real interest rates I believe we are not
too far from where we need to be even over the longer run.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Gramlich.
MR. GRAMLICH. Mr. Chairman, I support both parts of your recommendation. I think
Larry Meyer made a useful cautioning remark that given the productivity shock, we are benefiting
from a little good luck, if you will, on inflation. It is different from the good luck we had in 1998 but
it is good luck. And we should keep that in mind and be alert. I have always argued for being as alert
as we can possibly be. But luck comes in all shapes. I don't want to overdo the nostalgia bit, but I
can remember times when oil prices went up about as much as they have in the last couple of years
and the inflation situation was far worse than it is now. I can remember investment booms like we

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are having now and the inflation situation was far worse. So, if we really take this situation apart, we
might see that we also have some forces working in the direction of high inflation that we may be
under appreciating. I don't want to push that theme too hard and I think we should remain vigilant.
But when we talk about luck, it is easy to count the things on one side of the fence and not the things
on the other side of the fence.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Minehan.
MS. MINEHAN. I am also in agreement with your recommendation, Mr. Chairman. I
think we should wait to see more data on how the economy is shaping up--slowing perhaps--and how
productivity trends seem to be developing in the latter part of the year. I, too, think that the balance
of risks statement is vitally important. In my view we would send a very difficult message for the
markets to deal with if we did not retain the existing balance of risks statement. I believe the risks are
on the up side. I like the way Governor Meyer put the analysis in terms of questioning why we aren't
seeing inflation moving down with such a productivity surprise and why we aren't seeing that when
we look ahead with such a productivity surprise. And that is worrisome to me. I would not like us to
be associated with fiddling while Rome burns, but I don't think we are. I think this is a time when we
can afford to wait and see.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Moskow.
MR. MOSKOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with both parts of your
recommendation. I think this is a time to pause and take stock. We have seen slowdowns before that
were just temporary and the expansion picked up again quite rapidly. And there is the question of
whether a slowing in growth that is more sustainable would be enough to cap inflation or whether the
economy really has to grow at rates below trend in order to relieve some of the pressure that has been
built up. Obviously this is an open question. If the inflation data deteriorate due to energy as you

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discussed, or for other reasons, or if demand expands further beyond potential output, then I think we
have to be prepared to act very quickly. But for now I believe it is appropriate to follow your advice.
And I certainly agree that the balance of risks clearly is tilted toward higher inflation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Kelley.
MR. KELLEY. I support your recommendation, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you. I agree that leaving the funds rate unchanged at this point is
the right thing to do. I am also sensitive to the communications issues involved; it would not be
desirable to communicate the expectation that we are not going to raise the funds rate in the
foreseeable future or to imply that the next change might be down rather than up. But it is a
challenge as to how to avoid communicating that.
Regarding the language on the balance of risks, part of me would like to say that the
statement should always be that an unavoidable, permanent feature of a fiat money system is a
balance of risks toward higher inflation. [Laughter] If it ain’t going down it’s going up! But since I
am not likely to win that one, I think we do have to spend a little more time here on what it is that
leads us to believe that the balance of risks is toward higher inflation. I say that because in some of
the discussion today and in previous meetings it sounded to me as if we worry that higher
productivity through various avenues--through demand increases, wealth effects, higher real interest
rates, and liquidity injected by the central bank--causes higher inflation. And as Governor Meyer
suggested, we worry that lower productivity causes higher inflation. So, until we sort out a little
better whether higher productivity causes inflation or lower productivity raises the risk of inflation,
we are not quite ready to explain why we think the risks are toward higher inflation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Ferguson.

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MR. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support both parts of your
recommendation. I feel a bit drawn into the discussion about the communication of the balance of
risks, having spent nine months working with a number of you in trying to sort this out. I probably
shouldn't act on that feeling, but I will. First, I certainly commend and have always listened to the
wise counsel of our Vice Chair, and I agree that we actually have succeeded to some extent in
communicating something here. I am quite sympathetic to what Jerry Jordan just said, though. And
what Tom Hoenig said is also relevant: In my view there are a number of things that are leading us to
communicate that we think the risks over the foreseeable future are toward greater inflation. Some of
the reasons have to do with the labor markets, and one can say that without necessarily being a firm
believer in a particular number with respect to the NAIRU. So, I am comfortable with keeping in that
reference to the labor market. But like Tom Hoenig, I do think that what I am hearing is a broader
range of concerns having to do with other elements of the real economy--and in my case, maybe not
for others, having a bit to do with some financial conditions. I don't at all sense that we should
change our communication tool at this meeting. But in my view Jerry quite appropriately reminded
us that we worked hard to get to this language--not because we thought it was an easy out from a
difficult problem but because we thought it was going to help the public in its analysis of our
policymaking. So, as we go forward during the course of the year--regardless of what we do with
interest rates--I think we have to be clear about what is driving our assessment of the risks. I say that
because doing so will give the market a chance to look at the same things we are looking at. And if
we're looking past the unemployment numbers to other factors, we at least ought to signal that to the
market as best we can. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President McTeer.
MR. MCTEER. I support your recommendation.

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CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Would the Secretary read the appropriate language for the
directive and the statement that the balance of risks is toward inflation?
MR. BERNARD. I’ll be reading the wording from page 11 in the Bluebook: “The Federal
Open Market Committee seeks monetary and financial conditions that will foster price stability and
promote sustainable growth in output. To further its long-run objectives, the Committee in the
immediate future seeks conditions in reserve markets consistent with maintaining the federal funds
rate at an average of around 6-1/2 percent.” And the statement in the press release would read:
“Against the background of its long-run goals of price stability and sustainable economic growth and
of the information currently available, the Committee believes that the risks are weighted mainly
toward conditions that may generate heightened inflation pressures in the foreseeable future.”
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Call the roll please.
MR. BERNARD.
Chairman Greenspan
Vice Chairman McDonough
President Broaddus
Governor Ferguson
Governor Gramlich
President Guynn
President Jordan
Governor Kelley
Governor Meyer
President Parry

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Lynn Fox, would you hand out the version of the press
release that hopefully captures the substance of the Committee’s discussion? [Pause] Is this
statement satisfactory to all concerned?
SPEAKER(?). Amen!
MR. GRAMLICH. Could I just raise one point? I think the statement is fine. I don’t want
to talk about that. My point is that increasingly on TV programs we are seeing comparisons of what

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we said at the last meeting and what we are saying today. I wonder if it’s possible, since some of us
don’t remember exactly what the press statement said after the last meeting, if we could have a little
reminder of the changes made in the statement?
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Obviously we can give you the whole statement, but what
we can do, if you prefer, is to give you the operative paragraphs. There are only really two operative
paragraphs in this.
SEVERAL. Yes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. The rest is boilerplate. We could do that readily so that you
would be able to compare them fairly quickly.
MR. GRAMLICH. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but if market observers are
going to start looking at exactly how we change a comma from last time, I guess I want to know
about it.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I will say that when we draft this, we do it with precisely
that in mind. But we may not do it to your satisfaction. [Laughter] It may not be a bad idea to have
the comparison in front of us.
MR. GRAMLICH. I may just not remember.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Nobody remembers these things! In any event Lynn, let’s
do that next time. The next meeting will be on October 3rd and we will now adjourn for lunch.

END OF MEETING