Full text of Federal Open Market Committee Meeting Minutes, Transcripts, and Other Documents : Meeting, February 2-3, 1981 : Transcript

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Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee
February 2-3,

1981

A meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was held in the
offices of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
D. C.,

System in Washington,

starting on Monday, February 2, 1981, at 10:00 a.m. and continuing

on Tuesday,

February 3, 1981,

PRESENT:

Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mrs.
Mr.
Mr.

at 9:30 a.m.

Volcker, Chairman
Solomon, Vice Chairman
Gramley
Guffey
Morris
Partee
Rice
Roos
Schultz
Teeters
Wallich
Winn

Messrs. Balles, Boehne, Boykin, Mayo, and Timlen, Alternate
Members of the Federal Open Market Committee
Messrs. Black, Corrigan, and Ford, Presidents of the Federal
Reserve Banks of Richmond, Minneapolis, and Atlanta,
respectively
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.

Altmann, Secretary
Bernard, Assistant Secretary
Petersen, General Counsel
Oltman, Deputy General Counsel
Mannion 1/, Assistant General Counsel
Axilrod, Economist

Messrs. Balbach, J. Davis, R. Davis 2/, T. Davis,
Eisenmenger, Ettin, Henry, Keir, Kichline,
Truman, and Zeisel, Associate Economists
Mr.

1/
2/

Pardee, Manager for Foreign Operations,
Open Market Account

Attended Tuesday session only.
Attended Monday session only.

System

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2/2-3/81

Mr. Sternlight, Manager for Domestic Operations, System

Open Market Account
Mr. Allison 3/, Secretary, Office of the Secretary,
Board of Governors
Mr. Coyne, Assistant to the Board of Governors
Mr. Prell, Associate Director, Division of Research and
Statistics, Board of Governors
Mr. Siegman, Associate Director, Division of International
Finance, Board of Governors
Mr. Enzler 3/, Senior Deputy Associate Director, Division
of Research and Statistics, Board of Governors
Mr. Lindsey 3/, Assistant Director, Division of Research
and Statistics, Board of Governors
Messrs. Beck and Simpson 3/, Senior Economists, Banking
Section, Division of Research and Statistics,
Board of Governors
Mr. Johnson 3/, Economist, Govenment Finance Section,
Division of Research and Statistics, Board of Governors
Mrs. Steele, Economist, Open Market Secretariat, Board
of Governors
Messrs. Burns, Danforth, Fousek, Keran, Koch, and Scheld,
Senior Vice Presidents, Federal Reserve Banks of
Dallas, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco,
Atlanta, and Chicago, respectively
Messrs. Broaddus, Mullineaux, Mrs. Nichols, and Mr. Siren,
Vice Presidents, Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond,
Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston, respectively
Mr. Meek, Monetary Adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of New
York

3/

Attended part of Monday session.

Transcript of Federal Open Market Committee Meeting of
February 2-3, 1981
Session held on February 2, 1981
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think we better get started. In
general outline, I assume we probably will end up spending all
morning, at least, on the so-called technical study. We'll see
whether we complete it this morning. I assume sometime today we will
get to the economic outlook over whatever your forecast horizon is.
Assuming we get that far--and I would think we would get that far--we
will have at least a preliminary discussion of the longer-range
targets; I doubt that we will get to the shorter-range targets today.
And I think we can defer all the managerial reports and that kind of
thing until tomorrow. So, we will start. We have to approve the
minutes. Do I have a motion?
SPEAKER(?).

So moved.

SPEAKER(?).

Second.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Without objection, we will approve the
minutes. Do we have anything else we're supposed to do here at the
beginning? Well, we'll just go to the [new] monetary control
procedure. Presumably, the objective of this discussion is to arrive
at some judgment as to whether or not we're generally satisfied with
the technique that we adopted [in October 1979]--a technique which,
in the short run, emphasizes control of nonborrowed reserves. And we
alter that in the light of what is going on in the money supply or
total reserves. It implies judgmental adjustments in terms of the
multiplier; it implies some kind of federal funds rate band. My own
interpretation of that federal funds band may differ from that of
others, but I don't think it has been, in and of itself, much of a
constraint because every time we [reached the limit] we moved it. On
the other hand, there is some sense inherent in the technique, but
maybe not openly stated, that the way the technique is run doesn't
bounce reserves up and down very sharply depending upon what happened
last week or even last month. There is some sluggishness in
adjustments which in itself presumably has a short-run stabilizing
effect on money market interest rates even though that is not the
stated objective. But it is inherent in the way the technique has
been operated.
So, we have to decide whether to continue with that general
technique. And if we don't want to continue with it, somebody has to
put forward an alternative that is desirable in a rather important
way, which I suppose could go the gamut of more emphasis on interest
rates to more emphasis on some stricter or more mechanical reserve
technique. Assuming we want to continue generally with the present
technique, there are a number of questions that arise as to what
modifications might be made as a matter of emphasis, [such as] speed
of the reactions on nonborrowed reserves and some important questions
--which we probably could never resolve today in any event--on the
discount window and discount rate management and the management of
the federal funds rate band. I hope we can come out with some
coherent or incoherent--preferably coherent--conclusion on these
subjects.

2/2-3/81

-2-

Let me say something as far as the conclusions of the study
in a more technical area are concerned. I believe that in any
statement I make to the Congress I am going to have to review this
study and pronounce some general conclusions. The most important
conclusion will be whether we want to change the technique, the
question I just raised. But on a somewhat more technical level, my
understanding, subject to confirmation or change during our
discussion this morning--and I may not be comprehensive in this
listing--is that there is no real evidence that on a weekly or
monthly basis the money supply has moved more erratically this year
than before. I think what the study shows is that it looks that way
if you look at the raw figures; but by the time we get finished
seasonally adjusting and revising seasonal adjustments as we did in
earlier years, it's likely to look in a very short-run perspective
about as stable or as unstable as it did before. In fact, there is a
very large random component in the weekly figures and a considerable
one in the monthly figures. So, I take it the study suggested that
it was somewhat of an open question as to whether we had a more
erratic performance in the money supply this year than in earlier
years. If you look at it in a little longer perspective, say,
quarterly, then statistically we did [have more variation]; but
whether that was a reflection of external events like credit controls
and the sharp fluctuations in the economy or whether it had anything
to do with the technique is the open question. As the study put it,
it's certainly not proven that the technique had anything to do with
it.
I think all the studies suggest that there is a definite
tradeoff between interest rates and money supply stability. And the
tradeoff assumes rather violent proportions in terms of interest
rates, if we really want to stabilize the money supply. The studies
also suggest that the whole structure of interest rates has been
affected by fluctuations in short-term rates much more than earlier,
depending upon how you look at the studies. So, when we're talking
about fluctuations in short-term rates, at least in the last year,
we're talking about fluctuations in the whole structure of interest
rates. We have not found much evidence of an induced cycle in the
money supply when the procedures [led us to] tighten to force a
decline [in the money supply] and then to ease off to force another
increase. That's an important question. My judgment of what is said
is that there's not much evidence for that. And there isn't much
evidence that short-run--by that I mean quarterly or more than
quarterly--deviations in the money supply have any very pronounced
effect on the economy or on inflation because they are not terribly
important in that sense. Well, those are some of the tentative
conclusions I have drawn from what I have read of these studies, but
they are all subject to further interpretation as we proceed.
With that much introduction, I will have Mr. Axilrod
introduce the discussion more technically after welcoming Mr. Boehne
and Mr. Boykin to our council this morning. If you can survive this
meeting, I suspect you will be able to survive any of the future
meetings! Mr. Axilrod.
MR. AXILROD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of my
introductory comments will repeat some of yours, but I don't think
any of them will contradict.

2/2-3/81

MR. SCHULTZ.
surprise.

-3-

We'll watch carefully.

It may come as a

MR. AXILROD. I'd like to organize my introductory comments
around three general points. One is the limitations in the study;
second is a very brief summary of the findings, since they have been
summarized over the course of 15 pages in a memo; and third is a
general statement about what I, at least, would see as some of the
implications of the study for our present procedure.
First, on the limitations: It seems like a long period
since the introduction of the [new] procedure in October [1979], but
the period is now 15 months; and it's really very short for
evaluating the procedure. And it's particularly short because last
year was a very strange year in that there were a lot of what we call
exogenous factors affecting the economy that would have had impacts
on the money supply and interest rates no matter what procedure the
Federal Reserve was following. That makes the problem of averaging
out, so to speak, even more complicated because we had a year where
interest rates, money supply, and spending were subject to exogenous
shocks that make trying to find out what the procedure did to the
economy or to the money supply or to interest rates very difficult.
It's very hard to separate it out. So, given the nature of the
period, the 12 months that we actually used in [our studies to
evaluate] the 15 months or longer that we now actually have [used the
new control procedure] is quite short.
Secondly, of course, we couldn't just observe the procedure
and say: "Well, there was a lot of money and interest rate
variability." We were forced to try to see if we could conclude that
either the procedure gave rise to the variability or the variability
was caused exogenously and was independent of the procedure. We
needed something to judge all that against, so we had to use models,
which are nothing more or less than an average of 10 or 15 years of
experience, and see how they would have worked if 1980 in some sense
had had the characteristics of those 10 or 15 years over which the
models were constructed. Thus, I would really want to caution you
about that. I think that was a necessary procedure, but I want to
caution you because: (a) 1980 wasn't like the previous 10 or 15
years; (b) models do tend to be misspecified and they may not even be
a correct representation of the previous 10 or 15 years; and (c)
models have a disconcerting tendency to give very different results
if you put in one variable and take out another or if you change the
period over which the variables are estimated. As a result of that
we did try to use a number of different models, which had a number of
different views of the world, in order to try to give as fair a test
as possible. But I would use all these results with caution.
Because one model works in one period surely doesn't mean it's going
to work in the next.
Finally, I would say on behalf of the whole staff that we
have had a limited time to evaluate so complicated a subject. We
started thinking about this sometime in September; I remember
discussing it with the Chairman. I think we started working in
earnest on it sometime in October, and that really is a limited time
given the very complicated procedures we were involved in. So, some
of the work is actually ongoing and is therefore subject to change as
we learn more or stumble across better ways of doing things. As a

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-4-

check on ourselves, we did try in a seminar-type setting to expose all
the work to all the people in the Federal Reserve System who were
working on this project [for their critical evaluation]. And on two
of the crucial pieces, those by Mr. Tinsley and Mr. Lindsey, we did
have a conference with academic economists--Messrs. Brunner, Meltzer,
Rashe, Pierce, Kareken, and LeRoy--to have input from that end and to
expose our work not exactly to disinterested observers but to, we
would hope, rather critical observers. And I think that our work
there survived rather well and did have some impact on their thinking.
With that background, I'll try to generalize the findings
even more than they are generalized in the discussion paper. One
principal finding--and again this is not a matter of logic but partly
a matter of logic and partly just a matter of judgmental analysis--was
that 1980 was a rather special year, mainly because of the credit
control program and also, I believe, because of the dynamics of
inflationary expectations. The latter led to very much higher
interest rates than otherwise would have developed, which I think set
off apparent sizable further efforts by the public to economize on
cash as those high interest rates developed. So, I think the special
nature of the year gave us very pronounced disturbances in the market
for goods and services, which were set off by the credit control
program, and pronounced disturbances on the side of money, which were
set off by the very high interest rates that developed very early in
the year. And some of these developments actually were occurring
[concurrently], which tended to confuse some of the econometric
models.
Another general conclusion I would draw is that so far as we
could tell, because of these external shocks, much of the interest
rate and money variation was probably not intrinsic to the procedures
but derived from the large-scale shocks external to the Federal
Reserve [impinging upon] monetary policy against which the procedures
were working. That is an odd assertion. In some of the work that Mr.
Tinsley did, using the model constructed over the past 10 or 15 years,
he tried to see whether the results of the year fell within a
confidence interval one would expect, given the average of the past 10
or 15 years. And he found that for the most part they fell at the
lower end of the confidence interval or below. So, just from that
kind of simulation, it looked as if it was a rather special year.
Another conclusion is that on a more technical level it
seemed that our procedures performed reasonably well in the present
institutional environment relative to the simulated options; and I
think that was the conclusion drawn by our academic consultants also
in that conference we had with them. That is, we could not assert
from what we found statistically that we would have gotten better
control of money if we had just used as the criterion the monetary
base or total reserves over a period of one month and probably not
over a period of three months in the present institutional
environment. Indeed, it did look as if control of the base or total
reserves might even have made for less control over money in the
present institutional environment. Now, it is of some interest just
to indicate why that turned out to be so; it turned out to be so
because I think we all tended to underestimate what we call our
[money] supply-side disturbances. That is, there were shifts in the
deposit mix, with more CDs, meaning a need for more required reserves.
And unless [the needed reserves are] provided--if we just hit our

2/2-3/81

total reserves or total base target and don't provide them--we
immediately would get less money supply because the reserves aren't
there and [we would get] higher interest rates in consequence of less
money, given short-run money demand. And unless we have made
multiplier adjustments or have made a good guess about what the
multiplier is, we would get these erratic money supply movements if we
were following total reserves or a total base target because of these
supply-side disturbances--not demand-for-money disturbances, but the
[money] supply-side disturbances. And, of course, the models we work
with don't allow for that.
So, our conclusion was that it would be
very important to have judgmental multiplier adjustments if we were to
work on total reserves or the total base, certainly in the present
institutional environment.
Now, with institutional changes, it did appear that we could
do very well with a total reserve or total base aggregate; we'd make
the obvious institutional changes that I don't think I need to detail
for all of you. Some of this will [be discussed] later. But our
evidence, again working from the model, was that we'd do better with
total reserves in that context than the base because in the end we
would still have the institutional supply-side problem that currency
has a 100 percent reserve requirement and deposits have a fraction of
that reserve requirement. So, changes in the mix of currency and
deposits seem to have bigger disturbing effects in the multiplier if
one works with the base than if one works with total reserves.
Another conclusion we reached--and it seemed fairly clear--is that
more precise month-to-month control in money is likely to lead to
greater interest rate volatility. Indeed, the more precise we try to
make it--that is, the more we try to hit it month-to-month instead of
letting it average out over a 2- or 3- or 4-month period--the more
interest rate volatility there is likely to be. And this is a result
of what seems to be a rather inelastic money demand in the short run;
that is, in a week or two or three or whatever time affects the
monthly average, it takes one heck of a lot of interest rate change to
make people want to hold less or more money than they otherwise wanted
to hold when there is a normal, and often random, flow of funds in the
economy.
Finally, as a general finding, we detected little need for
precise month-to-month money control on economic grounds.
It appeared
that significant economic effects are more likely to appear after
three months or so than before, clearly. Some work Mr. Enzler did
gives us an order of magnitude of the effect [on GNP] if we were off
path for six months.
It turned out, for example, that if money was
growing faster than target by 2 percent at an annual rate over a
6-month period, we might get a higher nominal GNP of about 1/2 percent
at an annual rate. So, it's after six months that there gets to be a
little but nontrivial effect; it depends on your values and
preferences. But [such a divergence for] three months is rather
trivial in terms of its effect, and much of the 6-month effect is
offset later if you undershoot later; it's not offset, of course, if
you don't undershoot but just go back to the original level that you
had.
Let me say a few words, Mr. Chairman, if I may, about the
implications. I'd first like to note the advantages of the present
target procedure, which is a procedure in which we use nonborrowed
reserves as a day-to-day or week-to-week target but take total

2/2-3/81

reserves as a general guide so that adjustments are sometimes made to
the nonborrowed target because of what is happening to total reserves.
This procedure can be viewed as something of a compromise because it
is somewhat accommodative to deviations of money from the demand side.
That is, when money demand is strong--and it could be strong for
random reasons, as Dave Pierce's paper showed, because there's a lot
of noise in the money [stock] weekly and even monthly--there is a
degree of accommodation; borrowing goes up. But it is not total
accommodation because interest rates also go up. So the procedure in
some sense involves a degree of accommodation to money demand shifts.
If disturbances are from the goods market, there is a degree of
offset; it's the other side of the degree of accommodation, because if
there's an increase in spending and an increase in money for
transactions purposes, then there's pressure against that and interest
rates go up. This is not a bad thing because the economy, so far as
we could tell, last year showed evidence of both types of shocks in
it; indeed, since the mid-1970s there have been considerable money
demand shocks. So, there is something to be said for a target that
compromises between these two and gives the Committee time at
subsequent meetings to make a judgment as to how it wants to weigh
what is going on in the economy, particularly since in the 1-month
interval it doesn't look as if anything very fatal can happen to the
economy from that kind of compromise. In a sense, the present
procedures are a reasonable compromise. But because the discount
window isn't entirely open--if it were, then we'd be accommodative
entirely to all money demand [variation] whether it was a shift
[relative to spending or not--I'd say the compromise is weighted to
assuming that the shocks probably are mainly from the goods market.
But that represents a judgment on my part.
If the Committee wants more short-run precision and control
of money than it now has, there are a number of suggestions that come
out of the study. I would say that last year we did detect a little
more slippage in the way the control procedures have been run and have
worked than one might have expected in advance. I [use as] the
criterion that what one might have expected in advance was not so much
the 1-month slippage but the gain in precision if one goes from one
month to three months. If you look at the control horizon, it's three
months. And the gain in precision we got last year and actually how
the procedures worked out was less than the gain in precision one
might have expected just from averaging out a bunch of random errors
in the money to reserve relationship. That means there may be
something somewhat systematic [happening] there. And that systematic
thing could have been exogenous, in that it just sort of happened that
way, or there could be things in the procedures that we could improve.
Now most of the things that one would think of improving go
in the direction of playing the game as if we were operating on total
reserves because, while they don't bear a close relationship in the
models, once we abstract from all the things that the models can't
abstract from--which include the reserve requirement structures and
things like that--then the relationship gets closer. The evidence we
developed indicates that; much of that is in Mr. Lindsey's tables.
So, one way of pretending that you're a bit more on a total reserves
target is to adjust the nonborrowed path more quickly when total
reserves are strong or weak relative to path--that is, of course, with
total reserves strong or weak properly adjusted for multiplier shifts
to the extent that we can detect them. That would be one method of

2/2-3/81

pretending we were tending more to follow total reserves. Another
method would be to employ the discount rate more actively, which in
some sense is very similar to adjusting the nonborrowed path. In one
case, if total reserves are strong, you provide less nonborrowed
reserves.
In another case, if total reserves are strong, you raise
the discount rate and provide less incentive to borrow. So the two
methods are tantamount in a way to the same thing. In some subtle
sense of policy strategy, there are differences; but in a technical
sense they're tantamount to the same thing. You are trying to control
total reserves either by holding back on nonborrowed reserves or by
holding back on borrowings or vice versa if [total reserves] are weak.
Another possibility is to restructure the discount window so
that the demand for borrowing is more certain. That's a much more
controversial question and it tends to limit in a sense the System's
flexibility if pursued very far. We discussed that at length in Mr.
Keir's paper and in the summary document.
I'll only mention that
there are two extremes to consider: One is to close the window
entirely except for emergency borrowing, which would really convert
the nonborrowed path to a total reserves path; the other is to open it
entirely, and that would give you a structured discount rate
possibility so that as borrowing rises, interest rates would rise and
some resistance would develop, somewhat like now, to increases in
money above path. Of course, if we didn't have that structured
discount rate--if there were just a flat discount rate and an open
window--then the increase in borrowed reserves would be tantamount to
nonborrowed reserves. Even with a structured discount rate, I think
this kind of technique would make the highest discount rate the top of
the funds rate [band]; the funds rate would never go above it and it
would elevate the discount rate as an instrument of policy to an even
more important [position] than it could be under the present way we
operate. It's not a more important instrument of policy now but it
could be; and if the discount window were restructured, it could
become even more important. The variability of borrowing [demand]
that we've been so suffering with and unable to predict to any great
extent this year--and the evidence of last year is that it did become
more variable--so far as one could determine must have had to do with
administration of the window because if the window were open and there
were no problem with borrowing, presumably banks would use it. And if
it were closed, there wouldn't be any administration to worry about.
So there's something in the interaction between the way the discount
window is administered and how banks view the administration that
causes a variability in the borrowing demand that is difficult to
predict.
On other matters, it was difficult to find anything that
would say that a shift to contemporaneous reserve accounting would not
help short-run money control, particularly if we were on any kind of
even shadow total reserves target. On the other hand, it was
difficult to argue that maintaining lagged reserve accounting would be
a major deficiency if our horizon were something like a 3-month
period. I did not take a staff vote on any of these matters, but I
think the people who worked mostly in the Lindsey-type area do prefer
a shift to contemporaneous reserve accounting.
Finally, on these
particular points, if you want to control a narrower aggregate like
M1-B, then it's obvious--again, if you're playing a shadow total
reserve game--that you ought to remove the reserve requirement on
nonpersonal time deposits.
If you want to control the broader

2/2-3/81

aggregates, you have a considerable problem because you don't have the
legal possibility of putting reserves on most [of the components] of
those broader aggregates, even those that are held at banks and thrift
So, by their nature they are going to be more difficult
institutions.
to control with a reserve technique than the narrower aggregates.
All of these changes that one could suggest--some of them are
small and some of them are large--structurally would lead so far as we
could tell to more short-run volatility in interest rates in the
degree that they reduce short-run accommodation to random money supply
movements.
So, in a sense, if you're organizing the system to achieve
precise month-to-month control of money, we believe that would give
you greater short-run volatility in interest rates unless you're
fortunate enough to predict exactly the amount of money the market
happens to want [in a particular] month. And given the amount of
random noise in the money [stock], I suspect that's just purely
impossible.
However, these things would reduce the odds, I believe,
on getting far off the long-run [money growth] path over a period of
I think they would have that constructive effect.
three months or so.
So, even if they increased the volatility of interest rates in the
short run, which is likely, you might get a little less intermediaterun fluctuation.
That's because even with more volatile short-run
movement, the trend up or down [in short-term interest rates] once you
begin deviating--once money growth begins to get stronger or weaker-would begin sooner and with less of a lag than now, possibly. So, you
would have less need for very high [rates later] because you would
have gotten less far off [the money growth] path over a 3-month
period. While it rather clearly gives you more short-run volatility
in interest rates, it seems to me quite possible that you would reduce
the highs and lows and the intermediate-run fluctuations in interest
rates.
Finally, and on balance, Mr. Chairman, I don't think we found
a clear need for overhauling our procedures radically; at least that's
my conclusion.
I'd say that was particularly so because it was also
clear that last year may have been a special year in that the
disturbances that hit the system from the economy occurred [not only]
in the market for goods and services, which argues for a money supply
target, but also to a great extent in the long-run and the short-run,
that is the monthly, market for money, i.e. in money demand. And with
those kinds of disturbances, the present procedures tend to be a
rather reasonable compromise.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
I think it might be helpful if we divide
the discussion up into more technical questions at the beginning and
then more policy-oriented questions after that.
In the area of
technical conclusions or questions--I didn't bring the information
with me--it might be useful if you reviewed some of the results that
Mr. Lindsey had on the expected short-run instability in the money
supply [from the use of] the technique.
MR. AXILROD. Well, Mr. Lindsey is here.
If he would like to
come up to the table, he could review very briefly the evidence from
using total reserves, the total base, nonborrowed reserves, and the
nonborrowed base from several models, as well as some of the results
that the simulations suggested if we made some of these structural
That is mostly in Table 7 of your material, Dave?
changes.

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MR. LINDSEY. That's right. For those of you who have the
paper, you may turn to Table 7. We did try to construct various
experiments that pretended we were on different operating targets with
different reserve measures in turn and we asked ourselves: What is
the minimum amount of variability of money month-to-month and also
quarter-to-quarter that one might expect? We used two models under
the current institutional structure:
one developed some years ago by
the Board's staff and one recently developed by the staff of the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The results appeared to
indicate to us that, looking at month-to-month growth rate deviations
of money from a targeted level, about the best we could expect to do
under the current institutional structure was a month-to-month growth
rate error on the order of, say, 5 to 10 percentage points under any
reserve aggregate operating target.
MR. AXILROD.

Plus or minus 5.

MR. LINDSEY. That's plus or minus 5 to 10, in terms of a
standard error, which means that one-third of the time we would even
be outside of that band. Those results applied to the nonborrowed
reserves and nonborrowed base measures; they both gave very similar
results. As a result of the supply-side problems that Mr. Axilrod
discussed earlier, the [errors using] total reserves and total base
measures under the current institutional structure were considerably
larger than for the nonborrowed measures. So, that's the range of
error in hitting your month-to-month money target with the current
institutional structure. The actual misses were a bit above that for
M-1A and around the upper end of that range for M-1B. Now, those did
average out to some extent in the Board's monthly model over quarterly
periods, as Mr. Axilrod mentioned--a bit more in fact than the actual
experience quarterly. The Board's monthly model appeared to have
errors month-to-month that were about random, so they would tend to
cancel out partially as the period under consideration lengthened.
With the Board model we did look at a change in the
institutional structure both in terms of trying to eliminate the
supply-side errors that are susceptible to regulatory changes-eliminating lagged reserve accounting, making reserve requirements on
demand deposits uniform and universal, toward which of course the
Monetary Control Act will move us as it's phased in, as well as
removing reserve requirements against savings and time deposits. And
there once again I'm summarizing Mr. Axilrod's conclusions, but I'll
give you some numerical examples. Total reserves improved
considerably; in fact, it became the best operating target if rigidly
adhered to over a control period, giving an error on the order of 3
percentage points plus or minus two-thirds of the time. Also, as Mr.
Axilrod said, that would imply very significant [interest] rate
volatility in response to unexpected shifts in money demand over the
control period, which in this case is a month. So, it's not clear
you'd want to control money that closely. But it would be feasible
even, I might add, with the kinds of errors that we saw over the last
15 months since October 1979.
We did try an example with the kind of
graduated [discount] rate structure in the Board model that Mr.
Axilrod referred to and we did get some improvement--on the order of 2
percentage points--with the nonborrowed reserves and nonborrowed base
targets.
That gives you a sense of the range of variability under
different operating targets and different institutional structures
month-to-month. Looking at annual rates, even under the present

-10-

2/2-3/81

operating structure, it looked as though for a 3-month or quarterly
period the errors by and large fell into a range of 1 to 2 percentage
points in both the San Francisco and the Board models. As Mr. Axilrod
mentioned, the actual errors were somewhat larger than that because
there wasn't as much averaging out of the monthly errors in the actual
experience as was the case with the models.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Dr. Burns used to be fond of saying that
for a monthly period, four equals eight on the money supply. As
nearly as I can understand your results, in the present institutional
settings, minus 10 equals plus 10.
MR. AXILROD. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I can translate that, I
think he's saying minus 10 is as likely as plus 10 if you aim at zero.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Right, if you're aiming at zero.

MR. ROOS. May I ask, Steve, is short-run month-to-month
precision really important? I believe that even the most ardent
advocates of aggregate control will freely admit that short-run

precision is almost impossible to achieve. Is this a necessary factor
in deciding what we're going to do? Or if we announce and make clear
that we are going to concentrate on achievement of our longer-range
target, wouldn't this be it?
MR. AXILROD.

Well, very clearly, on economic grounds short-

run precision isn't very necessary.

So far as we can see, it has a

disadvantage of much greater interest rate volatility. It's very hard
to evaluate the implications of this greater volatility, but there are
certain kinds of thin capital structures in the various markets for
securities and [greater volatility] does tend to increase risks rather
greatly because of that. But if I could translate your question a
little, it's clear to me that if you could hit [a target] month-tomonth precisely, these interest rate variations would go away over

time.

That's because as the market responded to them, then of course

that would give you greater assurance of hitting it quarterly. That
is, if you can hit it month-by-month, you can surely hit it quarterly.
Clearly, it's more important to hit it quarterly than month-by-month.
I'm trying to say the only importance of having a procedure that gives
you better assurance [of hitting the target] month-by-month is that it
gives you better assurance [of hitting it] quarterly. I have a
feeling--and I'm not sure how we could test this--that you have better
assurance of hitting it quarterly even if you don't have a lot of
control month-by-month by aiming at it month-by-month; that would get
you where you want to go in the quarter even though you can't hit a
month-by-month target. I've gone around Robin Hood's barn a little in
answering the question, but that's how I would perceive it.
MR. ROOS. But if one were skeptical of the long-term wisdom
of pursuing our present policies of trying to control money and credit
through aggregate control, one would not use the staff conclusions
that month-to-month precision is difficult to achieve. That would not
be a basis for walking away from considering the broader advantages or
disadvantages of aggregate control.
MR. AXILROD. Oh, heaven's no!
the staff's conclusion.

And that certainly was not

2/2-3/81

-11-

MR. ROOS.

Yes..

MR. WALLICH. Just to make sure I understand you, the
quarterly precision results imply that one goes off one month or two
but in the third month one returns to track. If one stays off track
and comes back later than the third month, then there are more
perceptible effects on the real sector.
Is that right?
MR. AXILROD. That's right. That's what I was trying to say.
Jerry Enzler's simulation showed that if growth is off 2 percent at an
annual rate for two quarters, you'd have an impact of 1/2 percent at
an annual rate on nominal GNP.
MR. WALLICH. How do we make that need to get back within the
quarter, as it were, consistent with the [great] uncertainty--the very
large standard error within a month of plus or minus 10 percent--if we
really don't know in the first month where we are?
MR. AXILROD. Well, I think the answer is in part what I was
trying to say in response to President Roos' question. To the degree
that these are random errors, you keep aiming [at the path].
This
month, let's say, you aim at the path and you go way over. Next month
you keep aiming at the path and you may go way under, so in some sense
you've averaged out.
There's no reason to think that the errors are
going to be persistent on one side or the other.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Except that they seem to be, in fact.

MR. AXILROD. What we found in the past year was that, in
fact, [the actual errors] didn't average out as well as the models
averaged out.
So it might lead you to think that there was something
in the way the procedures were constructed or maneuvered that produced
this result or that there was something in the economy that was more
special [last] year. Of course, the models were confronted with that
also; but that worked out in practice to give you these greater
deviations. The simplest way to put it is that your average error in
a month is .6, or 7.2 percent at an annual rate if you think of it as
an absolute error. But if you think of it quarterly--the world isn't
this way--but if you had plus .6 and minus .6 and plus .6 in each
month of a quarter, then the absolute error that quarter because
you're now averaging quarterly in absolute terms would work down to
plus .2. With plus .6, minus .6, and plus .6, you'd be left with plus
.2 [for the quarter].
According to the models, the errors aren't
distributed in that nice way, so the improvement shouldn't be that
spectacular. But [the improvement] ought to be more like .6 to .3 or
something instead of .6 to .2. We got an improvement of .63 to .47 or
something like that.
It wasn't quite as good as some sort of random
distribution of the multiplier errors would suggest, and that was the
reason to think that there might be something more systematic
[happening] or some way to operate the procedures that would get us
there better.
MR. MAYO. Steve, does it make any difference in your
analysis whether you aim at a fixed quarterly cleanup, so to speak, or
a quarterly moving average?
MR. AXILROD. I don't think so. What we actually did in this
test was to take each month's target and see if we were off and just

-12-

2/2-3/81

average each intermeeting target for 3 intermeeting periods as a way
of viewing the random nature to see if, because of the random nature
of the money supply multipliers, that [approach] would capture that.
That is, if randomness had [produced] an upside shock in one period,
it ought to end up [producing] a downside shock in the next period.
We just averaged through that, so it wasn't a direct test of what
you're asking. But I would say the answer to [your question] is
probably no. One can conceive of a world where you're trying to get
on a long-run path and you just keep aiming at that level each month
to get you there, trying not to forget the past, and you're aiming at
[unintelligible]. If two months from now you're supposed to be "here"
and in one month you were "there," you'd still try to get "here" two
months from now.
MR. MAYO. It may give you the illusion of a little less
rigid definition of your intermediate goals, but I agree with you that
it probably wouldn't make any real difference over a period of a year.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Schultz.

MR. SCHULTZ. I had a couple of questions, Steve. First, I
noticed in the Bank of Canada's report to the United Kingdom that they
indicated that they didn't believe fluctuations in the money supply
[for periods] of less than six months made very much difference. Is
that a judgmental [assessment] on their part or did they do some
studies? Or would it really make any difference to us?
MR. AXILROD. Well, I assume they did some studies. I'm not
acquainted with their model as far as what results it would give. I
assume they have done the same kinds of studies we've done on running
over or under path for given periods and determining how much effect
on nominal GNP the model gives them. We used to say 6 months here;
the lags seem to have gotten a little shorter, so 3 months seems a
little safer. But, again, it depends on the magnitude of effect one
is willing to tolerate. I ought to add in that respect, Governor
Schultz, that none of the models takes account of the expectational
reaction to what is going on in the money supply. The expectations
are largely derived from past price behavior or past interest rate
behavior to the extent [the models are looking at] interest rates or
price expectations. And in this modern world I think [expectations
are] an additional factor to take into account. That is, if you're
running off path for 2 or 3 or 4 months, what will be the reaction in
markets to that? You may get more prompt interest rate responses.
You may get different kinds of pricing decisions than the models are
suggesting.
MR. SCHULTZ. Well, that leads into my second question, which
is essentially on the question of lag time. How good a handle can we
get on that question, and does it make any difference at all or could
it make any difference? If you look at the question of money supply
on one hand and interest rates on the other, do you get a different
feel for a lag time? That, of course, goes to my final question about
whether interest rates have induced wider cyclical changes. If you
make different assumptions about lag time, do you come to different
conclusions on that question?
MR. AXILROD. We tried to examine some of the evidence on
that and Mr. Enzler, who I don't think is here at the moment, did a

2/2-3/81

-13-

considerable amount of work in that area, both theoretically and using
the model.
You could construct a system where money demand was highly
interest inelastic--much higher than it is, presumably--so you would
have a lot of interest rate fluctuation when you tried to control
that, and where there was no response in the economy in the current
period but it occurred with a lag. Cycles in economic activity might
begin to develop because you are controlling money. This is quite the
opposite of what monetarists would contend. He could develop, with
reasonable estimates or unreasonable estimates of interest elasticity,
4- or 5-year cycles. Last year, of course, our cycle was-MR. PARTEE.

Four or five years you said?

MR. AXILROD. Yes, with 4- or 5-year regularity. Last year
our cycle was 3 or 4 months and that would imply a lot shorter lags
than we discovered empirically and that are therefore embodied in our
quarterly model. And given the fact that-MR. WALLICH. Well, that was one of the things we learned:
That the lags are shorter.
MR. PARTEE.

[Unintelligible.]

MR. AXILROD. Unfortunately, there was a credit control
program last year and there seems to be quite a correspondence between
the behavior of consumer spending and the imposition of the credit
control program and [subsequently] the reemergence of consumer
spending and the phasing out of the credit control program.
It's
difficult to ignore that evidence. So, we concluded tentatively that
the lags haven't gotten so short in relation to money policy and
interest rate behavior as to make it likely that we're going to get
consistent 3- and 6-month cycles as a result of a policy of trying to
control money. I wouldn't say that that's impossible, really; but it
just didn't seem consistent with the evidence of last year, given that
the credit control program was a very big factor in the year.
MR. SCHULTZ. Does the evidence indicate that the higher
interest rates go the shorter the lag time? Do you have any empirical
data on that?
Or do you get about the same kind of problem:
That the
credit controls have put you in such a situation that you can't come
to any conclusion?
MR. AXILROD. Well, I wish Jerry [Enzler] were here, but I
don't think we have evidence that says the lag time is related to the
level of interest rates.
But, of course, the higher the interest
rates, the more there is a current reaction, given a lag, because it's
just multiplied; if interest rates go up 20 percent instead of 10
percent, you get more effect given any lag structure right away
because the 20 percent is bigger. If you're going to get a 1 percent
effect right away out of 10 percent, you'd get 2 percent out of 20
percent. So it's simply that you get more power right away, but it's
the same kind of lag structure.
MR. SCHULTZ.
Final question. When you were looking at the
discount rate, did you look at the possibility of varying the discount
rate with some relation to the capital ratios of the borrowing
institutions?

-14-

2/2-3/81

MR. AXILROD.

No, we did not.

MR. SCHULTZ. The reason I asked is that it is clear that
interest rate spreads seem to have more effect at this point than
interest rate levels. And, obviously, the larger banks tend to be
doing the biggest borrowing. And they're the ones that are more
concerned with interest rate spreads because they can go out and buy
their money more easily. If [borrowing] had some connection with
capital ratios, wouldn't it have some interesting effects on [the
amount of] borrowing? Is it worth thinking about?
MR. AXILROD. Well, it's certainly worth thinking about. As
I say, we didn't consider it. The types of structures we did consider
were to try to increase rates as the amount of borrowing went up; and,
depending on how you do it, that could have an effect on larger banks
relative to smaller banks. The surcharge, of course, affects mainly
the larger banks where the capital ratios are low. So, I think in
practice, particularly now, much of that is taken into account. But
we could certainly consider it. The legality of it would be something
I would wonder about also. But it's certainly something to be
considered.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Partee.

MR. PARTEE. I just wanted to ask a question, a point of
clarification, about this business of departures from path. I think
we run into semantic difficulties because some people think of the
path as a rate of increase in an aggregate and other people think of
it as observations of the desired level over time. I think it's
awfully important that we all understand how the experiment was done.
Now, when Jerry introduced a departure from path--he's here now--that
was, say, the correction in the second quarter or the third quarter or
whatever his periodicity was, was the correction such that he reduced
the growth rate as much below path as it had been above path before?
What was done?
MR. AXILROD. It was run two different ways. First, if you
were above path in the first quarter--your path level was here and you
ended up there--in the second quarter you would go back to path.
You'd reduce the growth rate in the second quarter but just enough to
get you back to the long-run path level. The second kind of
experiment was that if you were above the path in the first quarter,
you'd [aim] below path in the second quarter and go back to path in
the third quarter and continue on.
MR. PARTEE. So that in some sense for a longer period the
average amount of money was the same as it otherwise-MR. AXILROD. That's right. For example, if growth is over
[path by] 1 percent on average for 2 quarterly periods and then goes
back to path, you obviously have more money in there on average than
if you'd been on the path consistently and also more money on average
than if you had gone under path before.
MR. PARTEE.
effect on the GNP.

In the first case, you'd have a rather lasting

2/2-3/81

-15-

MR. AXILROD. That's right.
In the second case it tends to
offset. Now, the Committee targets are more like the first case
because they are measured QIV to QIV, so you have a QIV average level
that you get back to.
So the way the Committee has set its targets is
much more like the case of being over and then going back to the path
instead of going under.
MR. PARTEE.
So there could be some residual GNP effects in
what our current path structure is?
MR. AXILROD.

Yes, if it works out that way.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Ford.

MR. FORD. I also want a clarification of what you did with
regard to your discount rate sensitivity studies. A priori one would
expect to see the amount of borrowing out of line with your plan the
greater the differential between the effective rate at the window and
the effective comparable rate in the market. But the amount of
borrowing is obviously conditioned by the administration of the
window. Did you find as we hit periods of time when the spread
widened between the effective rate at the window and market rates-say, for CDs adjusted for reserves--more problems with the borrowing
at the window or not?
MR. LINDSEY. Well, I was just going to say that in the
experiment I referred to we essentially took the monthly model, which
has borrowings as a function of the spread of the funds rate over the
discount rate and we eliminated-MR. FORD.
differential?

Which discount rate, with or without the

MR. LINDSEY.
what you mean?

Essentially without the surcharge.

Is that

MR. FORD. Yes. In other words, you did it against the
nominal discount rate rather than the one that affects the larger
banks.
MR. LINDSEY. Yes. What we essentially did was to take
account of the effects of the surcharge and other sources of error by
surpressing the error in that equation in the model completely. What
we had, then, was a perfectly known function of borrowing with respect
to the spread of the funds rate over the discount rate. And what that
meant was that it really didn't matter whether the funds rate was a
little over the discount rate or a lot over the discount rate in that
model simulation because we knew exactly how much borrowing would come
out of that. And then we just simulated the model accordingly. We
really didn't address your specific question in that model run. We
addressed another question, which was:
How closely could money have
been controlled if we had had this graduated discount rate structure
that would tend to eliminate the noise in the amount of discount
window borrowing as a function of the funds rate/discount rate spread?
MR. FORD. In other words, we don't know for sure that we
would have had less problems with the borrowing track if, for

2/2-3/81

-16-

instance, we had [operated] the window with a penalty rate
funds rate or something like that?

lover] the

MR. LINDSEY. That was one we didn't explicitly look at,
although we did look at the case where total reserves were simply held
fixed. And, as Mr. Axilrod mentioned, the case where you have the
penalty rate--where it is always a penalty or you just close the
window to borrowings other than emergency borrowings--you essentially
create a total reserves kind of target because nonborrowed and total
move together. So, in that sense we did examine that second case as
well.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

MR. AXILROD. I was going to say that I thought one of the
things you were asking, President Ford, was: Did we have more trouble
predicting demand for borrowing as the market rates widened above the
discount rate? I just checked with Mr. Johnson, who did some
regressions and looked at that material, and his response coincides
with my memory or lack of memory, which is that I can't recall that we
did have any more trouble with wide spreads than we did with
relatively narrow spreads. But it may be-MR. PARTEE.

We, of course, had more borrowing.

MR. AXILROD. We had more borrowing; trouble in predicting
the borrowing, I don't think we had.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The borrowing is not controlled by the
spread; the spread is controlled by the borrowing.
MR. AXILROD.

Or something.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Should we go over it once again? We have
lagged reserve accounting in the present institutional setting. Mr.
Axilrod and Mr. Sternlight are setting the level of nonborrowed
reserves. That decision sets the level of borrowing. The market rate
of interest at which that borrowing takes place is determined by the
banks, but not the level of the borrowing.
MR. FORD.
predict is--

We observed that the amount of borrowing we

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You observed that the higher the
borrowing, the higher the spread. The causation is the opposite way
than you are suggesting.
MR. AXILROD. What would happen when the demand for borrowing
is elusive is that in the end the funds rate would turn out to be
different than we expected. We force the borrowing on them but then
the funds rate might be different from what we expected, if we start
from that point of view.
MR. FORD. I guess, Paul, I have the bias of someone who has
been involved in it on the other side. That is, as I understand my
micro-economics, it says that the inducement to a profit-making bank
to come to the window is higher the greater the spread. All I'm
asking is--

2/2-3/81

-17-

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Exactly. When you look at it from the
standpoint of an individual bank, that's the way it looks.
But how is
the total amount of borrowing determined?
It's determined by the
difference between the reserve requirement and the amount of
nonborrowed reserves. And when all the individual banks [in some]
form or guise come in to borrow and when they've borrowed enough to
meet the total reserve requirement, they stop borrowing. It looks as
if it's your individual [bank's] decision, but it is not.
It's ours
in the aggregate.
MR. PARTEE. Well, that's a static analysis, Paul.
I agree
with you; it's absolutely true arithmetically. But I think what
happens is that you set into process dynamics that in fact [produce]
required reserves that can do that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You do that by the fluctuations in market
rates, which are affected by the discount rate.
The discount rate
will affect the level of market rates but not the spread, and that
will set in motion the dynamics.
MR. PARTEE. But my point is that if in period 2 we raise the
discount rate in order to try to close the spread, we can get a higher
funds rate pretty [quickly].
A higher funds rate will bring about-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. And that would bring the money supply
down, so it brings down the-MR. PARTEE. And then you'll have a narrowing in the spread,
you see, in subsequent periods.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. But it's the banks individually, of
course, that decide how much excess reserves they want to keep.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

If that varies.

MR. AXILROD. Mr. Chairman, maybe I should try to be clearer.
Where the demand for borrowing--the lack of knowledge of it--gets us
in trouble is this:
We believe, as the Chairman said, that it's the
rise or decline of interest rates that sets in motion forces that get
you back on your money supply path. And the theory of all this was
that as required reserves strengthened, borrowing would have to go up
because Mr. Sternlight isn't going to provide those additional
reserves; and with the rise in borrowing, the funds rate and [other]
interest rates would have to go up, setting in motion these forces.
And what throws us off sometimes is that on occasion the borrowing
will go up but interest rates won't. On occasion there's not that
kind of consistency and we get delayed; and then what further throws
us off is that the borrowing might go up and the interest rates might
go up but not enough and we really ought to be lowering the
nonborrowed path and forcing more current rate fluctuation. That's
what we tend to mean when we say the demand for borrowing is a
problem. Sometimes banks are more willing to borrow than at other
times and we don't get the kind of rate response we think would
develop in [these circumstances].
MR. FORD. The bottom line of what I'm trying to get at is
this:
On the basis of your research, if we did two things that have
already been discussed--one is to get to contemporaneous reserve

-18-

2/2-3/81

accounting and second is to make the window more directly related to
market rates--rather than the lags that we now have, would the
procedure otherwise be improved overall or not? Do we gain nothing by
doing that?
MR. AXILROD. The evidence that Dave Lindsey has developed
would say that contemporaneous reserve accounting would clearly
improve the multiplier between total reserves and money in the short
run. I think that would clearly happen. It would mean that in the
very short run, like a week, we wouldn't be able to predict required
reserves very well, so the funds rate might vary a bit more for any
given nonborrowed target. So, it would have that "cost," if that's a
cost. But, on your other question, I was unable to convince myself-maybe others have convinced themselves and if they have, then they
should speak up--that tying the discount rate [to market rates] would
make [the relationship] between reserves and money a lot more
predictable. Even if we had a penalty rate, if money got created this
week like mad--and it might--then because Mr. Sternlight is holding
back on nonborrowed reserves, market rates would jump well above the
penalty rate. So we'd get a sharp rise in market rates and then of
course we'd have to reset the penalty rate above that; and unless the
money supply responded very promptly that week, we'd get another
ratcheting up of rates and that sharp rise in rates might cause the
money supply to drop rather substantially. And we'd end up chasing
our tail a bit, particularly if [money] were to drop substantially
[and] randomly in any event. So, I can't believe that tying the
discount rate [to market rates] would give us more predictable
borrowing; but it would, I think, more predictably and probably more
certainly, force rates up faster or force them down faster. And [some
may] consider it [desirable] to have that advantage; but that's about
the only advantage I could come up with.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Corrigan.

MR. CORRIGAN. Steve, or Dave, or whoever, on this business
about random monthly or weekly movements of money: Is there anything
in your work that sheds light on the question of how you know when it
stops being random? My casual observation here--I hear your pluses
and minuses--is that it always seems that once the thing starts to go,
It isn't a plus and minus
it cumulates [in one direction].
relationship.
MR. AXILROD. All we could come up with is that as the time
lengthens, it gets less and less random. We, too, have observed that
the revisions seem to be consistently up or consistently down over
intervals of a month or so. And we have not yet shaken the resources
loose to finish the project of examining the sources of those
revisions to see if there is any bias evolving as we get into a period
when the revisions are moving up or moving down. But I don't think
that relates particularly to the material that Dave Pierce worked on
because, after all was said and done, it still looked as if there was
a substantial amount of noise, so to speak, which included
anticipating next year's seasonals in the weekly series less than the
monthly, less than the quarterly, etc.
MR. CORRIGAN. So, there's nothing here that really bears on
how we know whether we should consider something random or not in the
short run?

2/2-3/81

-19-

MR. AXILROD. No. If it's plus or minus $3.3 billion, twothirds of the time it's noise in a weekly series and we show a zero;
we don't know whether that zero has a +$3.3 billion of noise in it
offset by a -$3.3 billion of trend.
MR. LINDSEY. It is true that over time that $3.3 billion
falls. For a month, for example, the random noise in the change is
$2.0 billion. So, as time progresses, the range of uncertainty about
whether it's random or not narrows.
MR. MAYO.

The $3.3 billion was weekly?

MR. LINDSEY.
monthly change.

That was weekly; and the $2.0 billion was for a

MR. BALLES. Steve, are the X-11 program and other seasonal
programs still showing about a 3-month span of time in which to
suppress these random movements so that trend shows through?
That was
my recollection, but I haven't looked at that in a long time.
Mr. AXILROD. They keep perfecting those programs, President
Balles, and I'm not sure what that is.
MS. TEETERS. Well, my impression is similar to Jerry's,
because we did have these long strings of upward revisions and then
long strings of downward revisions. I thought you implied, Steve,
that the fact that we get a long string of upward revisions or
downward revisions comes from external factors.
Is it possible that
these errors in the money supply are leading indicators of economic
activity?
In other words, if they are all going up, we may be seeing
a sharper rise, say, in the goods sector than we had anticipated--or
[conversely], a sharper fall.
Is that possible?
MR. AXILROD. Well, that was one feeling we had when we were
living through it, in periods such as April and then in the summer.
We had that feeling [in April] when the economy was weaker than
expected and the revisions in the money supply between the preliminary
and the first published [number and] between the first published and
the second published [number] were showing a weakening in the money
supply. And we had that feeling in the summer when the economy was
turning out stronger than expected that those revisions were [all]
going the same way. That sounds as if there's a ghost operating two
machines--the economy and the money supply. There's not much reason,
if the data we get are coming through in some sort of "unbiased" way,
for those things to happen that way. I don't have any response other
than to say that we are trying to see if that was really true and what
the sources were. The only thing we could think of offhand was that
some of the original data, particularly the preliminary data that we
don't publish, have a good deal of estimating in them. And if we are
in a period when the money supply is dropping sharply, the estimators
--either at the Reserve Banks or the [commercial] banks--put in last
week's figure, but they should have been lowering last week's figure;
so, we get that more systematic kind of bias. I don't have the
evidence yet to say whether that was indeed what was happening.
[We
don't know] whether we have a coincidence or whether our instincts of
what was happening were not right.

-20-

2/2-3/81

MS. TEETERS.
I have a second question. The studies
distinctly show that fluctuations in the short-term rate got
transmitted much more thoroughly to the other rates in the [financial]
system, long rates as well as short rates. Did we find any evidence
that the increased fluctuations of the longer rates were interfering
with or changing investment patterns?
MR. AXILROD. Well, I think the answer to that is probably
"no," because of the length of lags in our big model between long-term
rates and investment plans. We didn't see evidence in 1980--this is
what I am remembering from the paper that Ed McKelvy and Larry Slifman
did--that there was much of a response in investments to the kind of
interest rate fluctuations we were getting. Moreover, we couldn't
find evidence that long-term rates were made higher in some sense than
they otherwise would have been because of the uncertainties created by
the operating procedure. That is, we couldn't find much evidence that
a liquidity premium was developing which would have lowered short
rates from what they otherwise would have been and raised long rates
from what they otherwise would have been. The latter, of course,
would be a damper on investment but with some lag. So, in general, we
were not really able to investigate, except through models or
judgmentally looking at the economy, the possibility of some impact of
greater week-to-week fluctuations in interest rates, short and long,
on business planning. That's an area we just-MS. TEETERS. You are dealing with a model that was built on
much lower variability in long-term rates, so that sort of constrained
your conclusions.
MR. AXILROD. Exactly. One could not say that there was no
impact of this kind of interest rate variability on business planning.
It was rather difficult for us to detect it or to find out how to
measure it, really.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Rice.

MR. RICE. During the period of the study, it appeared that
the broader the monetary aggregate targeted, the less variability from
these targets.
I think that's true. Was there anything in the study
that would suggest that that would always be true--that there would be
less variability in, say, M2 than in M-1A or M-1B?
MR. AXILROD. My memory, looking at it another way, is that
the monthly multiplier errors, at least in the models, were bigger on
M2 than they were on M-1B but that our judgmental miss--judgmental
meaning how we actually ran things--was less on M2 percentage-wise
than on M-1B in terms of the growth rates. I'm not sure whether I
have answered your question exactly.
MR. RICE. Well, I think that M2 deviated less from its
target range than did M-1A and M-1B from their target ranges.
MR. AXILROD.

Yes, exactly.

That's right.

MR. RICE. That was the question I was raising--whether there
was anything in the studies that suggested that would go on in the
future.

2/2-3/81

-21-

MR. AXILROD. No, only if the past is any guide to the
future. And on that I would say that in the future M2 gradually will
have less and less assets in it that are subject to reserve
requirements because [such requirements] are being phased out at
member banks.
Savings and small time deposits at member banks will no
longer be subject to reserve requirements and certainly are not now at
thrift institutions and nonmember banks.
So, whether that will
pertain in the future or not, I'm really not certain. Nor do I know
if it would pertain if we really aimed at M2. We were aiming at M-1B
here or at M-1A; we weren't really aiming at M2.
MR. SCHULTZ. Isn't it true that there are certain
countercyclical elements in the broader aggregates because of their
composition? That is, if the economy begins to slow down, isn't there
a tendency for people to put more money into some of the assets that
are in the broader aggregates rather than in the narrow aggregates?
Is there not a countercyclical movement in the broader aggregates?
So, would it not basically be true that what Governor Rice has said is
accurate because of the composition of the broader aggregates?
MR. AXILROD. I thought Governor Rice was raising the
question [of what would happen if] we were aiming at the target, which
is different from what would happen to these [aggregates] over the
cycle. It's quite possible, though I just don't remember. We didn't
But M2 might have a little less volatility
look at that in detail.
over the cycle than M1; one would think that would be the case because
it has higher interest elasticity of demand and M1 is much more
sensitive to income.
MR. PARTEE.

[Unintelligible]

savings accounts.

MR. SCHULTZ. Yes, I think John Paulus just did something on
that [suggesting] that the narrower aggregates were better to look at
than the broader ones because of this countercyclical effect of the
broader aggregates.
MR. MORRIS. Yes, but he ignored the fact that the
statistical relationship between the broader aggregates and nominal
GNP is much closer than the relationship between the narrower
It seems to me-aggregates [and GNP].
MR. AXILROD.

That depends on whose model and what time

period.
MR. MORRIS. I don't think that's true. If you were to take,
say, the pre-1970 data and estimate GNP in the past 10 years, there is
no question that the broader the aggregate, the better estimate you
would have made, no matter what kind of model you were using.
MR. AXILROD. Well, I don't want to quarrel with your
conclusion in particular. What I have been exposed to shows--and my
memory may be wrong--that you can come to virtually any conclusion you
want, with virtually any aggregate, in large part depending on how you
do it, but probably based on the premise that everything tends to go
up and down with GNP. There are big differences; the broader the
aggregate, the more it tends to go up and down with GNP. Sometimes
you can even find that total credit goes very well with GNP but there
is a cause and effect problem there.
The world turns out very

-22-

2/2-3/81

differently depending on what determinants you control. In this study
it was shown that the monetary base goes very well with money. That
happened to be because we were controlling the federal funds rate.
They went up and down together. If we turned the world upside down
and tried to control the monetary base, it didn't look to us from that
experiment that it went very well with money because one would be in a
different kind of world. So, without trying to contradict you
directly, I'd view all that with considerable caution.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. RICE.

Mr. Boehne.

Well, I have a second question.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Rice.

MR. RICE. Was there anything in the study that would suggest
what the most appropriate [width of the] target ranges would be?
Would the most appropriate range be, say, 2 or 2-1/2 or 3 percentage
points?
MR. AXILROD.

No, there was not.

MR. BOEHNE. I'd like to switch away from the financial side
to the real sector side. I was somewhat surprised that you didn't
lend much credence to the view that these fluctuating interest rates
had some kind of destabilizing feedback effect on the real sector,
especially since interest rates other than the federal funds rate did
seem to go up with the same amount of volatility. That's rather a
casual analysis, [based] especially on talking to people in
construction and to some extent in autos and some other durable goods
[industries] where inventory was important. I had a very definite
impression that these fluctuating interest rates did have an impact on
economic activity in their areas. I was wondering if your analysis
was largely econometric or if you attempted to gather any information
from the people who are actually in these industries.
MR. AXILROD.

Well, we had a very difficult time, as you

might guess, trying to distinguish between interest rate fluctuations
that were a result of our procedures week-to-week or month-to-month
and interest rate fluctuations that reflected what was going on in the
economy, given the System's money supply targets. As we went into the
year, most people would have expected that if interest rates rose, we
would have had a sharp drop. For a while we fiddled with the idea of
developing what economists, taking the words of philosophers, have
begun to call counter-factual worlds, and pretending that we knew what
the Committee would have done if they were on the old procedures.
After two or three what I thought were abortive attempts at that, I
thought the safest thing--in fact I might say the only intelligent
thing to do--was not to do that, because who knows what the Committee
really would have done in this very unique period. So, we didn't try
to construct the world based on the funds rate moving only a quarter
of a point or a half point. We in no way meant to say that housing
wasn't affected by the rise in rates that occurred or wasn't aided by
the decline in rates that occurred. But it looked as if the decline
in rates that occurred in the second quarter was not out of keeping
with the weakness in the economy in that quarter, so that we normally
would have gotten that [decline] no matter what procedure the
Committee was [following]. The question was how fast. However, we

2/2-3/81

-23-

could not ignore the fact that there was a credit control program that
went off in that period. It looked as if the sharp drop in GNP was
also caused by the credit control program [and that to an] extent the
rebound in the third quarter was affected by the phasing out of the
program. So we were driven to a rather weak conclusion that the
procedures themselves may have hastened the rise in interest rates and
hastened the decline in rates and, therefore, induced the drop a
little earlier and moderated the decline. That was our weak
conclusion because we really expected that under any control
procedure, given those money targets, we would have had that cycle
developing. Maybe that isn't stated as clearly as it might be, but
that's the basis for saying that the procedures as such might have had
what looked like other minor effects. We didn't think that monetary
policy did.
MR. BOEHNE.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Black.

MR. BLACK. Steve, you made the point a while ago that under
the existing institutional set-up the main thing--or maybe even the
only thing--that brings the money supply back to target, if it
deviates, is a change in interest rates.
If I understand the way you
view this, my guess is that you would think about that mainly as the
effect of interest rates on the level of money demanded. Do you also
think that the changes in the level of interest rates have any
significant effect on the supply function of money by affecting banks
and other financial institutions' attitudes with regard to how much
money they create?
MR. AXILROD. Oh, sure. It can get you into all sorts of
multiplier problems because of the mix of deposits, if there is any
response of bank excess reserves--we don't think there is much--and
also questions about the demand for borrowing if you are on a
nonborrowed target.
So, I do think that interest rates react both to
the demand for money and the supply of money functions.
The inability
of our monthly money market model, for example, to examine and to
allow for variations in the supply function are what throws it very
far off.
Its ability to predict interest rates that might emerge from
money demand/money supply interactions is, on the other hand, what
gave it a little better track record than we had judgmentally last
year. Judgmentally last year, in some sense, we didn't have it right;
we weren't able to say interest rates would go up fast enough or down
fast enough. Therefore, in determining the path, we were unable to
set borrowings high enough or low enough to begin with and, if we
began to get off, we didn't make adjustments fast enough. But I do
believe it would have an effect on the supply function.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Balles.

MR. BALLES. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say
that this whole study was quite impressive--it produced some very
useful results--especially given the time constraints that the staff
had to wrestle with, not to mention all the exogenous shocks [to] the
economy as the year went on that they had to try to sort out. My
question at this point, Steve, is with respect to what I consider one
of two parts of your summary memo. You point out various options that
the Committee might adopt if it wanted closer control over money. You

-24-

2/2-3/81

mentioned adjusting the nonborrowed reserve path more quickly, using
the discount rate more actively, and this rather extreme proposal with
respect to the discount window--either to close it down altogether or
open it altogether. The latter option is pretty far out, so I'd like
to concentrate on the first two. I'd ask you in your judgment which
one would be the more promising, since you have been so much involved
in having to construct these paths. That is, do you think it would be
more feasible to adjust the nonborrowed reserve path more quickly and
by greater amounts, or would you recommend that we do what we thought
we were going to do in October of '79, which is to adjust the discount
rate more actively?
MR. AXILROD. Well, as a matter of tactics, I would be more
inclined to start with adjusting the nonborrowed path because you can
undo that more easily if it turns out, as it may, that you've made a
wrong adjustment and want to undo it. When you are really rather more
certain that you want to force interest rates up or down faster than
they are going, then it strikes me, again, as a matter of tactics that
it's "better" in some sense to use the discount rate because it is a
more forthright, clear announcement to the market. But in periods
when you are a little more uncertain, which will probably be a large
proportion of the periods, then it seems to me that adjusting the
nonborrowed path, pretending you are more on total reserves, is a
reasonable approach for putting pressure on market rates that you may
want to undo later if it turned out to have been a wrong thing to do.
MR. BALLES. Well, if I could pursue it just one more step:
As you reflect on our experience since October '79, if one had the
opportunity to do things all over again, so to speak, and do them
differently, would you recommend with this benefit of hindsight that
we might have used the discount rate more actively? Or are you
relatively satisfied with how things came out?
MR. AXILROD.
MR. BALLES.

Well, that's a difficult question-I know.

MR. AXILROD. --to respond to, President Balles, because with
hindsight I might not have adopted the paths the Committee adopted.
MR. BALLES.

Okay, I withdraw the question.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Morris.

MR. MORRIS. Well, the principal tool the Manager has to deal
with an overshoot or an undershoot of total reserves is his ability to
adjust the nonborrowed path. Last summer and early fall when I raised
questions on this issue, you apparently had found a rule of thumb that
you would adjust the nonborrowed path by half of the deviation of
total reserves from the path on the grounds, I assume, that it was not
clear whether this [deviation] was evidence that the economy was
stronger or whether we had an increase in demand for money. So, you
split the difference. Has the study developed some guidelines that
would lead you to change that behavior in the future, or do you still
think that splitting the difference is about the best we can do?
MR. AXILROD. Well, we've always known from work we had done
before with the model, and this is specifically in this study, that if

-25-

2/2-3/81

you put yourself in a contemporaneous reserve accounting world--if you
had forgotten, it's almost impossible with lagged reserve accounting-if you were really aiming for total reserves and total reserves were
running, say, $200 million stronger [than desired], it's not
sufficient to lower nonborrowed reserves by $200 million because
borrowing would go up. You'd have to lower nonborrowed reserves by
$400 or $500 or $600 million so that the increase in borrowing is
less; so if borrowing then goes up $400 million, you've got your $200
You have to do a lot more in some
million effect on total reserves.
technical sense than you were suggesting that we were doing at times
last year. All our study suggested to me was that if we want more
short-run control, we ought to do more of whatever we were doing last
year. Now, that doesn't say how much more. Other evidence would
suggest one heck of a lot more to hit that total reserve target.
Of
course, our other evidence was that you shouldn't bother hitting that
total reserve target because it's going to give you more disturbing
interest rate variations than are worth whatever good you do for the
economy.
MR. ROOS. But reacting more quickly in adjusting the reserve
path does not eliminate the desirability, possibly, that while you are
doing that you may at the same time want to have the discount rate
move more closely [with the market] or more frequently. They are not
mutually exclusive, are they?
MR. AXILROD.

Oh, no.

MR. STERNLIGHT.
MR. AXILROD.
MR. ROOS.

They're reinforcing.

That's right;

they are reinforcing.

So, we could think of

[using] both.

MR. STERNLIGHT. But that might give you more of an impact
than you want. Both of those could work in the direction of more rate
volatility, and that is something to be weighed along with that.
MR. ROOS.
volatility.

That's what you give up--control over rate

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Winn.

MR. WINN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to join John in
complimenting the staff for what I thought were the right procedures
of really looking at what we have done and trying to learn some
One of the technical developments last fall,
lessons from it.
particularly, was the development of excess reserves. Did we really
ever focus on what happened on that to throw us off in terms of-MR. AXILROD. Well, it is widespread throughout the member
banking system. Very little of it, of course--the way we counted it,
it couldn't be very much--is for nonmember banks. It seems to have
developed in the first week of November just before they actually had
to hold reserves under the new procedures; and it has been sustained
and actually was rising on a monthly average basis through January.
So, in terms of correlations, it relates to the new Monetary Control
Act. Why it just didn't disappear after four or five weeks, we don't

2/2-3/81

-26-

have an answer for because we can't locate it at any particular set of
banks; it is pretty generally dispersed.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I suspect that the Federal Reserve Bank
Presidents may be in a better position to answer that question than
Mr. Axilrod.
MR. WINN. Well, I tried with our banks, and some of them
that suddenly have acquired branches or tried to consolidate their
holding company operations really got fouled up in their calculations.
But we didn't find a heck of a lot in our District; I've tried that.
And many of them who denied that they held any excess reserves, when
they really got into their figures found that they had them. So,
sometimes it's a matter of their not knowing what they're saying.
MR. AXILROD. I really think it's the switchover to the new
accounting that is somehow screwing up their own internal bookkeeping
procedures.
MR. BLACK.

I think that probably is a lot of it.

MR. PARTEE.

And that will wear down over time.

MR. AXILROD.
MR. PARTEE.

Yes, but it should have worn down by now.
Well, we haven't been on it that long.

MR. BOEHNE. Some of our banks are getting into the
electronic funds disbursements--the Max or George or whatever--and
find that they have to have a lot more cash to handle that, so they
end up with excess reserves. They are still trying to adjust their
inventories of cash and figure out how much they really need; that's a
factor in our area.
MR. BLACK. Yes, but they know that when they go into the
reserve period because that's lagged.
MR. BOEHNE. They know that except that they have people
dealing with new reduced reserve requirements and a new regime. There
are also different cash needs out there in their branching systems
because of [these ATMs].
I think the uncertainty just makes them more
cautious; that's what we find.
MR. BLACK.

Well, rate volatility could be involved, too.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Gramley.

MR. WINN. Paul, could I ask one more question?
If we looked
at our cyclical experience in the past where the fluctuations were
wider than we would have liked, do you think we could have used
various types of smoothing techniques, such as subsidiary targets-whether you used credit or nonborrowed reserves or any of those
things? Of course, our experience is very short lived. But you do
get some smoothing effect from that. On the other hand, that's a
[unintelligible], and other problems could arise.
MR. AXILROD. Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by
smoothing techniques, President Winn.

-27-

2/2-3/81

MR. WINN. To try to eliminate the fluctuations. In addition
to using the procedures we had, if we had had a subsidiary target with
respect to nonborrowed reserves or credit or any of those things to
modify considerably your intervention points-MR. AXILROD. Well, after the fact, we did try to see what
would have happened to GNP if we held the money supply path constant-that is, if one wanted to eliminate the M1 fluctuation. In that work
we did that partly through the quarterly model.
But an implication of
the work Mr. Tinsley did on the monthly money market models was that
we would have had a lot more federal funds rate fluctuation. So, we
concluded that there was no way, given what was going on in the
economy, that we could have smoothed the money supply without
desmoothing--if that's a word--the federal funds rate. If you wanted
to smooth the federal funds rate, it wasn't absolutely clear that on
average you would have gotten more [money] supply fluctuations. There
was probably a little more, but that didn't show up as strikingly.
MR. WINN.

You get different intervention points.

MR. AXILROD. Well, yes.
If you wanted to smooth the funds
rate, you would have had rather different intervention points. You
would have had a different funds rate limit.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Gramley.

MR. GRAMLEY. First, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to add my
compliments to those of Presidents Balles and Winn on the quality of
this staff study. I think it is excellent--perhaps the best that I
have seen in 25 years of association with the Federal Reserve.
MR. SCHULTZ.
research directors?
MR. GRAMLEY.
MR. PARTEE.

MR. AXILROD.
MR. PARTEE.

My goodness!

Better than under previous

A very good study indeed.
Well,

I don't know!

Better than the preceding housing study?
That was a good study; nobody ever did anything

with it.
MR. GRAMLEY. I have two questions.
First, back in the days
when policy was run with the federal funds target, staff studies here
at the Board indicated that if we switched from a fed funds target to
a reserves target, there wasn't really any reason for thinking that we
would improve our precision of monetary control. There wasn't
anything in the law of economics on how financial markets operate and
how financial institutions operate that would improve the precision of
monetary control by going to a reserve target. And I take it from
this staff study that that conclusion still holds.
MR. AXILROD. In the work that Dave did, using the models, we
got about as good a result with the funds target as we did with the
nonborrowed reserves target in terms of short-run precision. However,
if you assume structural changes in reserve requirements

that would

eliminate multiplier problems, I think we would get better results

2/2-3/81

-28-

either with [nonborrowed or] total reserves on the Board's monthly
model than we do with the funds rate just because of the elimination
of that multiplier problem. But, in general, we get roughly the same
result with the funds rate as with nonborrowed reserves.
MR. GRAMLEY. Second, I recognize that it certainly would
have been difficult, perhaps even impossible, to ascertain whether or
not these short-run fluctuations--week-to-week and month-to-month--in
long-term rates such as mortgage rates and so on affected adversely
the volume of investment. That empirically would have been hard to
pin down. But there isn't any real doubt as to the direction of
influence, I would think. Wouldn't you expect that to increase the
cost of doing business? It would increase the riskiness of investment
and, therefore, would tend to have a negative effect.
MR. AXILROD. Well, we certainly would have agreed with that
if we could have found convincing evidence that long rates were on
average higher because of fluctuations induced in short rates--that
is, if the yield curve involved a wider spread of long rates relative
to short rates. Of course, the yield curve was downward sloping much
of the time, so in that sense the spread was narrower, and we couldn't
really find much evidence of that. So, that led us to think that the
procedure itself is not a factor making long rates higher than they
would otherwise be. There were the fluctuations, and we can't answer
the question on that. Monetary policy, of course, in the sense that
the money targets did give that constraint [unintelligible], and that
isn't exactly what we were investigating. I would agree, of course,
that the money target was relatively low, so that did give us higher
short and long rates and the constraints from that. But my memory is
that we didn't find evidence that the fluctuations endemic to the
procedures were making for higher long rates relative to short rates.
given
so an
going
don't

MR. GRAMLEY. That's not my point. My point is that at a
level of long-term interest rates, rates are fluctuating more;
investor cannot know what his cost will be at the time he's
to finance, and that will tend to have an adverse affect. I
know how big, but it can't be helpful.

MR. AXILROD. We did not find a way, really, of investigating
that. I don't think there's evidence for or against that proposition.
I would say the evidence does suggest that transactions costs have
gone up. So, in some sense, if you go to that point, a new issue is
slightly more expensive even though the whole yield curve may not show
it. We did find that bid/ask spreads were higher; I don't know who is
bearing that [cost] ultimately, whether it's the borrower or the
lender. But there was evidence that transactions costs went up.
MR. STERNLIGHT. If I could add a little to that: I don't
think I could provide any evidence about what happened to the volume
of investment, but there were truly adaptations in the market because
of the fluctuations in rates in terms of more variable-rate contracts
or floating-rate contracts. Also, there was some tendency by
corporations, municipalities, and so on to have shorter-term
borrowings.
MR. PARTEE. We had a lot more hedging, too, didn't we,
Peter? Didn't we see an increase in the participation in the futures
markets by dealers over the last year and a half?

-29-

2/2-3/81

MR. STERNLIGHT. Very much so. How much of that was because
of the greater rate volatility or how much was a trend in those
futures markets because they were just recently developing would be
very hard to untangle.
MR. AXILROD. Well, in the housing market there would seem to
be evidence--again it was a continuation of a past trend--of [lenders]
trying to put all the risk on the borrower, which tends in effect to
raise rates. When rates go down, they don't want to incur the bigger
cost of getting out of that higher rate commitment, so they try to
[lend] at the higher rate, and that sort of thing. But whether that
had to do with our procedure or was just a response to the cyclical
volatility of rates and the greater rate of inflation expected and the
fears that that induced is somewhat open to question.
MR. PARTEE. I think the rate swings--it was such a big
[interest rate] cycle--must have had quite an influence on behavior in
real markets.
MR. SCHULTZ. Continuing on this question just a bit more:
In the Bluebook I noticed that you assumed that if short-term rates
were at current levels a year from now, the mortgage rate would be
higher. Why is that? That was the one thing in that family of
interest rates that seemed rather interesting to me. All the other
rates you assumed would be at about the same level but the mortgage
rate was higher.
MR. AXILROD. It's a bit higher; we assumed essentially that
the demand for mortgages is still pretty strong given the structure of
the--

MR. SCHULTZ. I see. You just repressed demand during the
period and it's going to get stronger and stronger. Okay.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You have a very short comment, Mr. Black?

MR. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I was just going to say that the
people with whom I have talked would bear out what Governor Gramley
suspects: That these fluctuating rates made it very difficult for
them to plan. But I think the key issue, if we are successful in this
experiment we began back on October 6, 1979, is whether over the
longer run we really would have more fluctuation in long-term rates.
My feeling is very definitely that we would have less. But I do think
unquestionably that [the greater fluctuation] has affected business
planning. Those are my comments.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. BALLES.

Two minutes.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. BALLES.

You have a short comment, Mr. Balles?

90 seconds.

Maybe I'd better keep it for after coffee.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

We are not going to have any coffee.

MR. BALLES. I'll try to do it in 90 seconds.
a tough day here! Some of you have coffee.

It seems to be

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2/2-3/81

All animals are equal, but pigs are more equal

MR. SCHULTZ.
than others!
MR. BLACK.

Some people plan ahead.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. What we intend to do is break for lunch at
about one o'clock and there will be some food here for the Committee

members and the staff.
MR. BALLES. In Steve's summary of the key findings of this
study, one of the points he made was that should the Committee desire
closer monetary control than we had, let's say, in 1980, one of the
prices that will have to be paid for that is greater interest rate
volatility. We've been doing some work, which if it continues to hold
up under the test of actual experience, would offer a more hopeful
outcome. Dave Lindsey referred to the San Francisco money market
model; during the lunch break I'll distribute a short 4-page memo that
summarizes some of its key findings. I'll just give a thumbnail
sketch of it here. Our model in effect provides some evidence that we
would not get as much interest rate volatility as conventional money
demand models would indicate if we were to aim at closer monetary
control. The reason, of course, is that the conventional models all
have money demand as being quite interest inelastic and demand for
bank reserves the same way. Hence, we have to move interest rates
over a wide [range] in order to get some results. What we have done
is to plug in the behavior of banks into this model, and bank demand
for reserves is based on their own profit-maximizing actions. In
seeking to finance their loans in the least costly way they will
adjust offering rates on managed liabilities; in their dealings with
the public in doing this, transaction deposits are affected. The
bottom line is that we find that the demand for money and also the
demand for bank reserves is more interest elastic than the
conventional models would show.
MR. PARTEE.

Inelastic did you say?

MR. BALLES.

More interest elastic.

MR. PARTEE.

Elastic, yes.

MR. BALLES. The proof of the pudding, of course, is in the
eating. And it did happen that in 1980 this money market model
incorporating the behavior of banks gave a much better fit in
predicting both M-1A and M-1B. The word of warning, of course, is one
already given by Steve earlier: That models work in some years and
don't work in others. So, it remains to be seen whether the favorable
results we got in 1980 will hold up in 1981 and beyond. Secondly, our
findings indicate that this special credit control program of 1980 and
all the stern talk of Vice Chairman Schultz that went along with it-and maybe because of that stern talk--did have quite an impact on the
behavior of bank loans. And, in turn, that goes a long way in
explaining these volatile movements of the aggregates.
Well, I think the two most important implications of our
(1) that closer monetary control, if we are right,
staff study are:
would lead to noticeably less interest rate volatility than implied by
conventional models; and (2) that many deviations of the monetary
aggregates from target, which are usually attributed to a shift in the

2/2-3/81

-31-

money demand function instead can be caused by money supply shocks
induced by such factors as volatility in bank loans. The first
conclusion suggests that we shouldn't let concerns about unacceptably
large interest rate variability prevent us from responding perhaps
more aggressively than we did in 1980 to deviations of the aggregates
from target. And the second point suggests that we should be less
willing to accommodate such deviations because they often reflect
money supply shocks and not always money demand shifts.
But, as I
say, we'll distribute this at lunch time so you can read it and study
it.
I hope you will find it worth taking a look at.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think we ought to turn to the policy
issues.
There are a lot of issues that can't be covered in a study of
this sort. Mr. Gramley points out that we get just as good control,
according to all these studies, by manipulating the federal funds
rate. The operative question may be whether we are willing to
manipulate the federal funds rate in that way. I think the main
reason we went to another technique is that we probably are not.
The
other point I would observe is the one that Mr. Balles was just
talking about. I don't know about his model, but there seems to be a
lot of evidence that there's a pretty good tradeoff here between
interest rates and stability in the money supply. Now, Governor
Wallich has often made the point that 999 out of 1,000 people--or
maybe 999,000 out of a million--are looking at interest rates and not
deviations in the money supply when they are concerned about stability
or instability. How we approach that problem is an interesting one.
Let me just ask a question to see whether we can dispose of
some questions or not:
Should we have a debate about going to a
different control technique? I don't know how to go to total reserves
or even the monetary base under the current institutional setting.
But we could do it nominally, anyway. I say I don't know how we can
do it in the current institutional setting because we don't control
discount window borrowing under any of these proposals in the short
run. That is a question to which I will return. But, can the
discussion proceed on the basis of working within the framework of an
immediate nonborrowed reserve technique with an eye on total reserves,
leaving the question of emphasis open?
Or do we [want to discuss]
going back to federal funds or take another step toward some other
kind of aggregate? Is there anybody who wants to argue the case for
any of these extremes?
MR. GRAMLEY. I'd like to argue the case for going back to
the federal funds target, not because I think the Committee is likely
to agree with me or go in that direction but because I think the value
of using that technique needs to be kept in mind when we ask ourselves
what we are doing with the present technique or how we are going to
improve it.
First, we have to recognize that the way we communicate
our

[policy actions]

to economic activity today is through movements

of interest rates.
Interest rates are the cutting edge of policy. We
have eliminated almost completely the changes in credit availability
that were so important in years past. And I think one could argue
that it's unconscionable for the central bank not to be concerned
about the cost of credit, the cost of money, when that is what is
communicating its effects to the real economy.
Second, I would argue that increasingly over time in recent
years we have found that instability of money demand has become a

2/2-3/81

-32-

I'm
very, very large problem in an operating technique of this kind.
not at all sure that that is going to go away. It may well be a
characteristic that's endemic in a system in which there is so much
inflation that interest rates get to a point where people are moving
assets from one area of the financial markets to another and where
financial institutions are innovating to make this possible. We may
find that five years from now we have problems every bit as large as
we face prospectively in 1981 in trying to interpret what is happening
to the narrow money measures.
Third, as I mentioned, I think under present institutional
arrangements we can operate to control the growth of money quite as
precisely with the federal funds target procedure as we can with
reserve targets. Finally, I think it is important that this technique
we adopted does indeed communicate a lot more of the variability in
interest rates in the short-term end to the long-term end. And,
although we can't measure it, it does have some adverse effects on
investment proceedings. Even if people could hedge this interest rate
risk, they are going to pay to engage in this hedging transaction.
Mr. Chairman, I think you are right--and this is what we need to keep
in mind--that there really is only one reason why we should have
abandoned the federal funds target procedure to go to the reserve
target. And that is because if we operate on federal funds, we
explicitly take responsibility for what is happening to interest rates
and then this becomes a very, very difficult world to live in. But we
need to keep that in mind. If that's the reason we are on this new
strategy and no other, then we can go about conditioning how we apply
the new strategy in ways to take advantage of the economic aspects of
operating on a federal funds target.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let me restate perhaps somewhat
differently a couple of points you made. As to your first point
regarding our concern about interest rates, I didn't mean to eliminate
that in saying we would eliminate the question for consideration. We
can do that with either technique. I think you mean that you are
interested in the broad movements of interest rates when you make that
point, and that remains a relevant consideration whatever technique we
use. And it bears upon how hard we press on nonborrowed reserves at a
given time.
The money demand shift is a valid technical point. If that
indeed is a big problem, the [unintelligible] point has been made. I
do think the last point you made is a point of some concern. There
may be something in our present technique, merely because of the
uncertainty it generates about interest rates when we don't take
responsibility for them, that makes the market react more sharply to a
short-term change in the federal funds rate, let's say, than it would
otherwise react. Now, I don't know what that mechanism is, but one
gets a little suspicious when we sit here and communicate no
conviction at all about what the short-term rate should be. The longterm market jumps more strongly in either direction than it otherwise
would because market participants are trying to figure out themselves
where [the short-term rate] is going to go, and father isn't telling
them. That may be an important deficiency in the present technique as
it is now operated. And it may be the [main one], as I see it. Well,
the money demand shift is a technical argument; [the issue is] how
important it is, I guess. Mr. Balles was just saying the opposite.

2/2-3/81

-33-

But this last point does bother me a bit.
comment?

Does anybody else want to

MR. WALLICH. If the procedure has had a defect, in my mind
it has been the excessive volatility of interest rates. Given the
biases that I have, I've been more concerned about the rapid decline
[in rates] in the second quarter of last year than about the way they
got up to 20 percent on two occasions. And now that I hear from Mr.
Axilrod that apparently the sharp drop in the second quarter didn't
have much of an economic repercussion--that the quick revival of the
economy was largely the work of the real sector and perhaps the credit
control removal, not the drop in interest rates as I had thought-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. AXILROD.

He didn't quite say that, did he?

No.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. He just said there was no special drop in
interest rates due to the new control technique.
MR. PARTEE.

On variability, day-to-day and week-to-week.

MR. WALLICH. Well, I think the reason rates dropped so
sharply clearly was due to the new techniques. And had we stuck by
the new techniques firmly and stuck on the path, rates would have
dropped a good deal more.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think you are making an assumption that
he didn't make. That may be true in practice, but he is saying if we
had moved the federal funds rate as much as would have been indicated,
given the decline in the money supply, we would have gotten a similar
result.
MR. AXILROD.
in real GNP.

Well, also more particularly, given the decline

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. AXILROD.

Well, given the decline in the real GNP.

It was not out of line with what normally

happens.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We may not in fact have done that under
the old technique; but if we had, there wouldn't have been much
difference I think is what he said.
MR. WALLICH. Okay. Well, in that case I have to say that,
in my opinion, we wouldn't have moved from 20 percent to 10 percent in
that quick succession any more than we would have moved up from 12
percent or so to 20 percent. So I think what we need is more
observation of interest rates.
But I'd be more concerned about sudden
drops than about the increases we have had so far. Of course, we
could have increases that would worry one. But the way I look at
interest rates, as you know, is that they are not really high after
taxes.
MR. PARTEE.

In real terms.

-34-

2/2-3/81

[Yes].
Now, as a technique improvement, I
MR. WALLICH.
would say it would be worthwhile to go to a contemporaneous reserve-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, let's get to that later and just
stay on this other more general subject.
MR. WALLICH. I would say that we should not go back to the
old technique of targeting on the funds rate because I've seen us not
do enough or not act on a timely enough basis in the past. The
technique we have now forces our hand. I would add that we might be
well advised to publish our directive immediately under the new
procedures, but I guess that's a separate topic also.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Corrigan.

MR. CORRIGAN. This is partly a question, Steve, if I could.
Let's say we stayed where we are now in an operating mode, recognizing
the interest rate/money supply variability tradeoff. Could we buy any
materially greater amount of stability in interest rates if we
significantly widened reserve carry-forwards and permitted carryforwards of both deficiencies and excesses, maybe even up to 5 percent
or something like that, and let financial institutions put a much
greater cushion in there to absorb some of these rate effects that we
might otherwise get?
MR. AXILROD. We might. I'd have to think it through more
carefully. It's sort of like opening the discount window.
MR. CORRIGAN.

That's right.

It has the same effect.

MR. AXILROD. I suppose it could buy some week-to-week
interest rate stability at some cost in terms of the multiplier.
MR. CORRIGAN.
real cost there?

That's what is not clear to me.

Is there a

MR. AXILROD. I'd have to think it through; my instinct is
that there might be. But how big I'm not sure.
MR. SCHULTZ. Could it not go either way?
destabilizing as well as stabilizing?
MR. CORRIGAN.
week.

Could it not be

Well, my instinct is--

MR. SCHULTZ. Suppose it all went in one direction in one
Does it not have the same kind of effects we might--

MR. CORRIGAN. Well, if we did this kind of thing, we'd have
to have it work both ways. There would have to be some kind of
penalty; it wouldn't be a freebie.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I wonder whether we can try to stay on the
more general questioning and comments on the broad approach. I think
this comes under a modification of existing techniques. Mr. Roos.
MR. ROOS. Do you mean just on whether to go back to interest
rate stabilization or--

2/2-3/81

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
reserve base or something.

-35-

--or go to something else, like the

MR. ROOS.
I think there are several fundamental things that
we ought to consider in charting our course. First of all, it's
important that we recognize that we have to do something that will be
convincing, not just to those of us sitting in this room but to the
broader body politic in the world in which we live.
I will start from
a conviction that, right or wrong, most people who have observed what
has happened since October 1979 are far from convinced that it was as
much of a success or as satisfactory as maybe some of us would like to
think. There is a certain degree of disillusionment that we didn't
achieve as effective control of money and credit as we announced in
1979 we were going to seek. Under the present political conditions we
face, to try to explain away in a convincing manner whatever
shortcomings last year had is almost impossible to achieve.
Secondly, I think it follows that to say we will continue as
we did in 1980 but will do the job a little better, without announcing
or without agreeing upon certain changes from that procedure, will be
less than convincing to the people who are watching us. Politically,
if you want to put it that way, and without acting irresponsibly, I
think we have to say that we are going to make some changes.
The
world knows that we have conducted this study. The world, or at least
those who are interested in what we are doing, is going to be anxious
to see the results of this study and what we do about it.
So, I don't
think we can get away with either trying to say that 1980 was an
unqualified success or that we drew a poor card because of certain
extraneous factors. And I don't think we can get away with just
saying we are going to do what we did and do it better.
Ideally, Mr. Chairman, if we could press a button, I would
say that we should announce that we are going to move the discount
rate to a penalty rate more frequently in order to avoid the problems
that we had in that regard last year. Ideally, we should seek
contemporaneous reserve accounting. I think we should announce--and
this may require longer-run action--that we will seek greater
uniformity of reserve requirements. I think we have to bite that
bullet; we have to say that we will do that in order to achieve
steadier control of credit and money.
I think we are going to have to
say openly that we will permit interest rates to fluctuate more
freely. We can't have it both ways. And I happen to believe that if
we explain [what we are doing] as effectively as you did yesterday on
ABC--and I would compliment you, sir, because I thought you were
superb on that program--that we have the ability to tell people what
we are going to do.
If we told people that we were going to do this,
I believe we would have less volatility in interest rates than some
people might think.
Short of achieving these ideals, I think it's absolutely
essential as a bare minimum that we change our procedures and move the
discount rate more frequently to a penalty rate and also that we
restore contemporaneous reserve accounting. We have people out there
who are aware of these issues.
People in the Administration--the
Stockmans and the Sprinkels--are going to watch us like a hawk, and
we're not going to be able to bluff our way through this.
I think we
have to show that we are doing something, and try something new. It
would be a tragedy for the Federal Reserve to move back to interest

2/2-3/81

-36-

rate stabilization, even though it might be theoretically desirable;
it will not fly in the political climate in which we're living.
That's my point of view, Mr. Chairman, in a nutshell.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, we'll get to these more detailed
suggestions. On the general point are there any other comments?
Governor Partee and Mr. Morris next.
MR. PARTEE. I would stay with our present arrangement. I
come from where Lyle comes from, really. I would like to be able to
control the mechanism by specifying the funds rate. And I think we
could; but the trouble is we won't. We won't because we won't change
the funds rate as much as it ought to be changed. There is an
interesting piece of work done by Peter Tinsley which says in effect,
if I understand it correctly, that in getting toward our targets if we
change the funds rate 3 percentage points at the beginning of the
period, we get about as much result as changing it 6 percent over the
whole period. Well, that's fine, except who today is going to say:
"We are running a little low on the aggregates so let's drop the funds
rate 3 points today." Nobody will ever say that. And that's the
whole trouble with it; we just don't move it enough. If it weren't
for that, I would prefer the funds rate because there is a fuzziness
to this other approach in the multiplier and in the changes of the
nonborrowed targets and so forth that bothers me. Of necessity we
have to put more of this onto the staff than it is good for this body
as a policymaking body to do; and it's because of the fuzziness and
the intricacy of the arrangements we have. But I would stay with it
because I don't think there's anything better.
As I believe Steve suggested in the summary report, given our
experience of the last year, I would opt to be freer to change the
nonborrowed path in order to offset what is happening in borrowed
reserves more than we have done. That's because I rather agree with
Larry that people just can't quite understand why the aggregates were
so much more volatile in the year after we changed to this experiment
that was to stabilize them than they were in the year before. I think
that is a practical problem we have and, indeed, it probably has
contributed to some of the economic instability. I wouldn't agree
with Henry who seems to say let's keep interest rates high or with
others who say let's keep them low. I wouldn't talk about an interest
rate target in a longer-run sense, because what we do then is just
substitute our own predilection for what the market is trying to tell
us. I think that in a longer-range sense we have to have [some]
volatility in interest rates; they've got to go high and they've got
to go low, and they have to do it in response to changes that we see
developing in the economy and in the performance of the aggregates.
And when we are all done with it one might say--I'm sure most people
around this table would say--it's too bad rates dropped that far last
summer. But last summer we didn't know what we now know. And that's
always the difficulty. Some might say it's too bad that they have
gone as high as they have now. But we don't know. Maybe it's just
right that they have gone as high as they are now. So, I would say
that we should try to be objective and not substitute our judgmental
predilections as to what the statistics are telling us.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Morris.

Any other suggestions on the

present technique are in the next agenda item, not this one.

-37-

2/2-3/81

MR. MORRIS. Well, I come out about the same way Chuck did
except that I don't have any nostalgia for going back to controlling
I sat around this table for eleven years
the federal funds rate.
watching us always moving too little and too late. And even though
1980 was not a model year of any kind, it seems to me that it was
inherently a year in which any approach to monetary policy was going
If you tell me that we are going to
to run into serious problems.
have a year in which we have a one-quarter recession where the economy
is declining at a 10 percent real rate, I can tell you that there is
just no way we are going to avoid interest rate volatility. So, I
view the past year as a success story only because I think it was a
success relative to what would have happened if we had stayed with the
old procedure.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Black.

MR. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I think conceptually we can control
the rate of growth in the aggregates with either a federal funds
handle or with a reserve handle of some sort. However, it's not only
the unwillingness to move the federal funds rate that makes it an
impractical way of doing it, but also that we don't know how much we
ought to move it. The federal funds rate that is compatible with some
reasonable rate of growth in the monetary aggregates somehow defined
is not a single level; it's a pattern of rates over time. And I just
despair of ever knowing that, so I think we ought to stick with more
I would like to suggest at the
or less our same procedures.
appropriate time a couple of modifications that I think would improve
the procedures. The problem with the [funds rate] to me is that we
don't know how high or how low it ought to be at any time; and I know
nothing in past experience, either empirically or in theory, that
would give any basis for selecting that level.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm not sure we know how high or how low
nonborrowed reserves should be; that's the problem.
MR. BLACK.

Well, I'm going to take care of that in the next

exercise!
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Balles.

MR. BALLES. I essentially agree with Chuck Partee on the
reasons for staying with nonborrowed reserves as the operating target.
In practice we simply didn't or weren't willing to move the funds rate
around. The additional comments made on that same subject by Frank
Morris and Bob Black I find myself in agreement with, too.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Anybody else have any comments?

Bob Mayo.

MR. MAYO. I would just add briefly that I took great comfort
in Steve's analysis. I think all of us agree that even 15 months is a
terribly short period; nevertheless, Steve told me not that this had
been a great success, using Frank Morris' word, but that it was not a
failure. And I think we owe it to ourselves to pursue it further with
whatever refinements we can do.
I agree in that the lesson I got from the past
MS. TEETERS.
12 months is that we couldn't pick up judgmentally when the rate
should go up or go down. There's a distinct advantage to this and, in

2/2-3/81

-38-

contrast to Henry, I think they should go down as well as up. But it
has to be an equally up and down elevator. I think the main point
that comes out of a great deal of this is that we really shouldn't try
to control the money supply on a rigid growth rate basis. We should
aim for it, but the forces in the real economy are going to swing that
money growth rate around and we should be prepared for it and try to
interpret the misses that we make as a reflection on our projections
and what is going on in the real economy. To try to make money grow
at an absolutely steady rate in a fluctuating real economy will create
such horrendous fluctuations in interest rates that it will defeat
what we're doing. Also, as Lyle says, we have to keep an eye on the
general level. We can get rates so high that they choke off economic
activity, and that's not really what we're aiming for. So, I would
stick with the procedure, but I would put in perhaps a more
fluctuating target in terms of where we want the money supply to go in
light of what we know is going on in the real world.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If no one else has any comments, I will
declare it the consensus that we will work in the general framework of
our existing techniques. We will now discuss modifying them. I do
think there is basically a tradeoff here, if nothing else, of the
desirability of escaping responsibility for discretely moving interest
rates. A number of people have said that in ten years of experience
we didn't move very far because we don't like to do that. But [our
new procedure] has exacted a price in terms of generating more
instability throughout the interest rate structure, which may pass.
If you want to be an optimist, you say that people will learn enough
through the experience, and long-term rates will no longer fluctuate
so much. But they certainly fluctuated in disturbing proportion to
the fluctuation in short-term rates in the past 15 months. Now, we've
only been through two, or not even 1-1/2, interest rate cycles, I
guess, so people haven't had much chance to learn from that. Maybe as
they get through another one or two, these reactions will be less.
Let's hope so.
Let me turn now to modification of the technique, which has
obviously already been touched upon in a number of comments. I'm
inclined to reverse [the order].
Well, let's not reverse it; they're
somewhat inter-related, I guess. Let's just discuss both together:
the speed of the nonborrowed reserve adjustment--another way of saying
the speed of the total borrowing adjustment--and the handling of the
discount window or the discount rate. The latter has already been
touched upon on a number of occasions. I think there is a difference
between moving the discount rate more frequently and moving it
automatically. I continue to be of the belief, and I have heard
nothing to dissuade me, that if we are operating on the present
technique and tie the discount rate to market rates--whether you call
it a penalty rate or whatever you call it--we would have an explosive
short-term situation either up or down that I find impossible even to
contemplate. The present situation is awkward and is imposed upon us
partly, but not entirely, by lagged reserve accounting. When things
are tight we don't have a penalty rate and we can't have a penalty
rate, and it looks as if we're subsidizing the banks to some extent.
If I could minimize that appearance and reality, to the extent it's a
reality, I'd be very pleased. I don't know how to do it. We tried to
fool around with the surcharge, but those are the kinds of problems I
see. That does not mean we cannot move the discount rate more

-39-

2/2-3/81

frequently. But then as a matter of judgment, I think we also--and it
may be good or bad--are going to get more instability in market rates.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. One thing that hasn't been studied by
the staff--and maybe it's worth studying in answer to the specific
point that you just made--is how to avoid as big a component of
subsidy and the criticisms, which may mount further as we get into the
thrift institutions discount window situation. It seems to me that we
might consider having a surcharge--a frequency surcharge as we do now,
although the timing could change--but that the size of the surcharge
should be equal to the difference between the basic discount rate and,
let's say, the average of the 3-month CD rate over the previous four
weeks. We wouldn't get as big a ratcheting effect from that and banks
that come in too frequently would have their subsidy eliminated. I
think that might be worth some study.
MR. RICE.

Good point.

MR. SCHULTZ.

I agree.

It's certainly worth study.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't know how you get rid of the
ratcheting effect but that-VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

I think you reduce it.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it depends. You reduce it to the
extent you open up the time between now and when they actually have to
pay the penalty. But you have a pretty high-MR. FORD. Paul, I'm not sure. You've made this point
number of times about the mechanical connection between the way
[window] works and the rest of the procedure, but given the
complexities of the dynamics that Chuck was hinting at, I'm not
it's that simple. It could blow up in our face; I'm not saying
swear I know that it wouldn't--

a
the
sure
I

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it wouldn't blow up indefinitely.
If you get rates high enough so that the money supply adjustment is
forced, it then goes down the other way.
MR. PARTEE.

Yes, you overshoot; that's the trouble.

MR. FORD. Well, whether or not you do, that's why I'm
That more and more
interested in what Mr. Balles was suggesting:
people are saying that this is not so automatically volatile; that
there is some kind of damping mechanism that may come into play to
save us.
Granted, it's a policy risk to test it, given the
uncertainty of the theoretical dynamics of it.
On the side of arguing
for trying it, a couple of things have popped up that really bother me
about the way we operate the discount window. One is the subsidy. It
has been mentioned that it's perceived that we are giving away money
to the banks. Another thing about it is the difference between the
way we operate our window and the [way the Home Loan Banks lend to
the] thrifts. We're all aware that Congressman St Germain is
conducting a hearing the thrust of which, as I read it, is to say:
"Hey, let's allow the thrifts to come in and borrow and forget about
this [problem of] exhausting their other [sources of funds]."
In that
connection, we've been looking at how they operate at the NCUA and how

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the Home Loan Banks operate their windows. I'm sure you know that
they operate their windows basically by offering their members a
variety of loan options based on maturity, more or less keyed to the
yield curve that they have to deal with when they go out to raise
money to fund the loans. I'm not saying that that's ideal for us, but
the fact is that as we interact, if we allow the difference between
what it costs to borrow at the Fed window to be vastly different than,
say, at the Home Loan Bank window, sooner or later we're going to have
to face the political realities and the heat that Congressman St
Germain is generating.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Look, we have all these problems; the
question is how to avoid them.
MR. FORD. Well, the obvious thrust is to move toward their
system of going more toward-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. They're not creating reserves when they
are lending. We just agreed to stay on this technique and I'm
assuming the current institutional setting involving a reluctance to
[As for] forcing the
borrow at the discount window [is not changed].
banks in the aggregate to borrow, I'm just telling you the opposite of
what you tell me. A bank is not going to borrow [from the window]
unless the market rate is above the discount rate. So, when we force
the banking system as a whole to borrow, we can't keep the market rate
below the discount rate because they won't individually borrow to come
up to the total we're forcing them to borrow. It's just as night
follows day in the short run with this technique, and we can't escape
it. Now, we can change other institutional settings, but there's no
use sitting here saying we're going to force the banks to borrow and
we're going to move the discount rate above the market rate. If
anything isn't possible, that's it.
MR. FORD. No, it has to be accompanied by modifications of
this technique that we use here; you're right.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Now, you can go to the other extreme and

say we don't care about banks borrowing. We just open up the discount
window to anybody who borrows and then the discount rate will become a
ceiling. And we can have a penalty rate and all the rest; but we've
got to make all the other consequent changes in our present technique.
MR. PARTEE.
funds rate.

It's tantamount to getting back to setting the

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Right. Doing that has precisely the same
economic effect as getting back to controlling the federal funds rate.
But now it is being done through the discount window instead of
through open market operations. That is, it's just going full circle
and going back to where we started. Now, I'm stuck here because if we
force them to borrow, there's just not going to be a penalty rate. If
there's not a penalty rate, it looks as if we're subsidizing them.
That's my [dilemma]; you tell me how to get out of that box.
MR. MORRIS. I think what we have to do is go toward some
rationing system. Given that we need to have the banks borrow X
amount of reserves, the second problem is: Which banks are going to
be borrowing X amount of reserves?

And it seems to me a rationing

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system, which we open to the thrifts as well as the commercial banks,
could be designed to feed in that level of reserves; at least we know
week-after-week that it wouldn't be the same banks that would be
demanding that-MR. SCHULTZ.

I suggested

[basing] it on a capital ratio.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, in general terms, the stricter we
are in lending through the window, presumably the lower the level is
that we would need to adjust the nonborrowing path to facilitate this.
But if we go in that direction, we would get less borrowing. In that
sense, we would have less subsidy. But the market rate then
presumably would be even higher depending upon what formula we use
relative to the discount rate. But [the window] would be used much
less frequently; it wouldn't make much difference. That is one way we
can go.
MR. CORRIGAN. Doesn't it follow from what Steve was saying
before that we also get that result if we take the position that we're
only going to use the discount window for real emergencies?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. MORRIS.

Well, that's the extreme of that policy.

But that's not really a policy that we can live

with.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

No.

MR. GRAMLEY. The one thing to keep in mind about any
significant change in the administration of the discount window or the
arrangements by which banks and other institutions can come to borrow
is that if we want more monetary control precision, we're much better
off to stay where we are than to introduce a system that is going to
take six months to a year to figure out.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. There are a lot of traditions surrounding
the discount window; it has been more or less the same for decades and
decades. When you change something like that, you get a big
educational problem in the short run. And then if we decide we don't
like it after we change it, we've got a heck of a problem going into
something different I think. These are the constraints that have left
us where we are now. That doesn't say we're in a perfect position,
but it's very hard, I think, to change this in a fundamental way.
MR. BALLES.
Paul, I'd agree certainly with your conclusion
that, especially given lagged reserve requirements, there's no
practical way to get to a penalty rate.
But having agreed with that,
I'm not at all certain that we-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let me just put in as a footnote that, of
course, this only happens when borrowings are high. When the money
supply is running low and borrowings are low, you'll get a penalty
rate.
MR. BALLES. But having agreed with that, I'm not convinced,
as yet at least, that we need to have as big a gap as we see presently
or have seen in recent months between the discount rate and the funds
rate. Maybe, especially with the benefit of hindsight, we ought to

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dwell on whether it would have been feasible to close the gap
somewhat. I think that's a rather practical question because as we
look back on 1980, in a technical sense, most of the misses on the
aggregates came from overshoots or undershoots of borrowings that were
not quickly or fully offset in the nonborrowed reserve path. To some
extent a more active discount rate policy of keeping at least closer
in touch with the market might have headed off some of that. I raise
that as a question rather than a conclusion.
MS. TEETERS. The last two times we raised the discount rate,
it went right through to the market rates. It didn't close the gap at
all. The moves were undertaken with the idea of trying to close the
gap and the gap just moved ahead of us.
MR. PARTEE. And the gap has been widest in the last eight
weeks, John, when we've had shortfalls in the aggregates.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I think this discussion could be seen
a little more systematically if we look first at what modifications
[we could make] in the way we set the initial borrowing requirement,
what modifications [to make] to the nonborrowed reserve path, and then
see what residual kind of change, if any, is needed in the operation
of the discount window. The point you made is quite relevant. We
know that there is a tradition here and it disconcerts people if we
keep changing things very frequently. We achieve some of the same
effect through the first two alternatives. It would seem to me that
we might give more weight in setting the initial borrowing requirement
to what level of borrowing is needed or, in other words, what level of
nonborrowed reserve path is needed to achieve the intermediate target
and less emphasis to smoothing the post-meeting funds rate. I've been
as guilty as anybody else, or maybe more so. And if we are going to
try to come closer to the path, then maybe we can't afford the luxury
of that kind of smoothing emphasis in setting the initial borrowing
requirement. I think that's worth talking about anyway.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Well, it's clearly a kind of tradeoff.

But if you're suggesting going in the direction of more rapid

reductions when we're overshooting in the nonborrowed path, we're
going to get more borrowings in the very short run anyway and it's
going to increase the discrepancy between the market rate and the

discount rate, if that's important to you. Now, this discussion
already took place in part. We could also raise the discount rate
more rapidly; in the very short run it's probably not going to narrow
that discrepancy between the discount rate and market rates very much,
but we would have taken two actions to get the money supply back on
course more quickly at the expense of more interest rate volatility
and not done much with this appearance of subsidy. But that doesn't
end up saying it's wrong because-VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

I understand the implications of it.

But I find myself in a very curious situation in that I happen to
agree with Larry Roos that in the broader sense of the term the
politics require some demonstration of a further improvement in the
procedure. Unfortunately, the only further improvement I can think of
is trying to track the money supply more closely even though it
probably means more interest rate volatility. I don't have the bottom
line magical, mystical, faith that some people do that when we get
this money supply tracking very closely, for some reason interest rate

2/2-3/81

-43-

volatility is going to be reduced. But even though I don't have that,
I don't see any other way to go; the whole [prospect] of improvement
seems to me to lie in that direction. We can't make a partial
regression toward more emphasis on the fed funds rate without looking
So, even though I don't like the bottom line, the dynamics
foolish.
of the situation are taking us in that direction. Similarly, along
with a more realistic initial borrowing requirement, I also would
support the implied recommendation--maybe it's implicit enough in
Steve's summary paper--that the nonborrowed reserve path be adjusted
more promptly and more sharply. Right now I don't know how to handle
it.
Do we leave this entirely to the discretion of Steve and Peter,
checking with the Chairman? Or are there some parameters or some
guidelines--it's very hard to conceive what they would be--that the
FOMC would want to give to the Desk and the staff on the size of the
It seems to me that these
adjustment of the nonborrowed reserve path?
are the areas we ought to try to reach a consensus on first and then
see what's left.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, they're very much interrelated. And
we could do the opposite. We can do what you're suggesting in the
nonborrowed reserves--[by moving] the borrowings more rapidly either
at a meeting or between meetings depending upon what happens--without
changing the discount rate or even the discount window administration.
That's an interesting question. Would we conceivably get more impact
on the money supply per basis point of interest rate change because we
put the banks into debt, which worries them and forces adjustments in
banks that may not be fully reflected in interest rate movements in
the market because of nonprice considerations?
MR. BOEHNE. This idea that was brought up about the politics
of the situation requiring some improvement in procedure seems to me
very much a Catch-22 idea.
I think we have created expectations that
are beyond what we can basically deliver in terms of the precision of
hitting money supply targets, given this idea that aiming for zero is
[as likely to result] in +10 as -10.
If we refine [our procedures]
further, which I think we ought to do, then we just heighten those
expectations even more.
It seems to me that we're always in that kind
of jam. Therefore, I would not make changes because we think doing so
is going to improve the political situation. Whatever refinement we
make, [what we can deliver] is still going to be far from the
expectations that have been created.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it would be a mistake to make
changes for the sake of making changes. We ought to make changes for
the sake of perhaps doing a better job. Almost any change we make may
suffer from the defect that people will read more into it than it's
really worth. But it's a little dangerous to make a change because
somebody wants us to make a change and then the change doesn't produce
the result that's intended.
MR. ROOS. Paul, I'd like to follow up on your analysis and
Tony's and ask Peter and Steve a question. What were the factors that
led to not adjusting the nonborrowed reserve path more quickly last
year? In other words, was it a conscious policy that caused you not
to move as quickly as you might move this year under this new point of
view or was it a concern about the effect on interest rates? And if
the latter was the case, wouldn't you still have that concern in the
back of your head starting next Monday?

2/2-3/81

-44-

MR. STERNLIGHT. We had a rule of thumb, as Steve has
mentioned--I don't know how religiously we followed it--that we would
move the nonborrowed path by about half of the undershoot or
overshoot. But that was conditioned at times by other factors. When
the Committee indicated in the adoption of its objectives that, say,
the objective was 4 percent but it wouldn't mind if that were a little
faster or a little slower because of where we were coming out vis-avis the annual targets at that point, that was the conditioning factor
in whether we pressed for more or less adjustment.
MR. ROOS. If, in order to eliminate the problems we had last
year, this Committee made a broad request of you to move it a little
more quickly than you did last year, what would that mean in terms of
what you would do starting next week?
MR. STERNLIGHT. Well, I'd have to work that out with my
colleague, Mr. Axilrod. In my own view, there is room for more of
that kind of adjustment. Certainly one can look at some periods last
year, like the August-September period, and say that we surely should
have moved the path more. I think one can come to a different
conclusion about last spring when the adjustments were on the other
side. Some regular upward adjustments of the nonborrowed path might
have helped us restore [monetary] growth more rapidly, but that could
have sent us into even stronger growth by the third quarter and
perhaps would have been unwise in retrospect. So, it's not clear that
on all occasions more rapid adjustment would have been the answer.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I suspect that during a good part of last
year we were influenced by projections of the money supply, which
we've now learned were totally unreliable. Each month during that
autumn period all the projections said it was going to level off this
month.
MR. AXILROD. Another factor to consider with respect to the
spring is that we were literally stopped from raising the nonborrowed
reserve path. Total reserves were weak because there was no
borrowing; and if we had created a substantial amount of excess
reserves, the funds rate would have gone close to zero. So, in some
sense the lower limit of the funds rate range was a stopper there.
The Committee, of course, gradually lowered that limit, but that was
an effective stopper. And when you're lowering the nonborrowed
[path], one of the advantages of lowering it in a sense, is that often
it will require a Committee meeting. That's because to lower [the
nonborrowed path] means we're probably going to hit the upper limit of
the funds rate range, and it might mean we'll get there faster and
that will require a Committee meeting to get beyond it.
MR. ROOS. But you still had hovering in your mind a concern
I thought I just
about the effect on the fed funds rate, right?
understood that.
MR. STERNLIGHT. I think we had an awareness [of that effect]
but I don't think that necessarily stopped us from adjusting-MR. AXILROD. It's only a stopper in a sense when we hit the
upper limits or the lower limits. Then you'd have to have a Committee
meeting.

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MR. PARTEE. May I make a comment, Paul, just on this
question?
I agree with the idea that we need to adjust the
nonborrowed [path].
It may be that it's not so much the size of the
initial adjustment that we make in response to an overshoot,
particularly, or perhaps an undershoot, but rather that there ought to
be some concept of scheduling more and more adjustments as the
duration [of the miss] extends. That is, you might start with
adjusting the path for half [of the deviation], but then if it
persists for a second week you might take another bite out of it and
in the third week you might take still another bite. It's a way to
get a time factor into it. Now, we'd have to fool a lot with the
numbers to figure out what kind of decision rule we might have, but
that seems to me a possible way to go that I'd like to see explored.
In any event, when we do this, the chances are that borrowing is going
to be bigger than it was before because there will be some lag time
before the market begins to adjust; so as we do this, we'll have more
borrowings.
I agree with you that we have to have a spread; and I
agree with Nancy that we've certainly seen, when conditions were tight
at least, that every time we changed the discount rate the spread reestablished itself by the funds rate going up as much [as the discount
rate] and sometimes a little more. That does create the perception of
subsidizing the [borrowing] institutions, and I guess there's no way
of avoiding that level of borrowing and that differential in rates.
So the question really ought to be: Who ought to get the subsidy?
I
guess if I were a thrift, I would say that I have never been permitted
to get the subsidy; only the member banks have. My observation is
that it's the big member banks that get it and, therefore, I think
that leads one to some kind of rationing system that gives the public
perception of a high rate out there for somebody or other. And that
does make it possible to spread the subsidy around. Perhaps the price
of that will be a bigger differential than now exists because of the
inefficiency of the market in having smaller institutions see their
opportunity. So, I like Tony's suggestion or some variant of Tony's
suggestion as a way of spreading the subsidy around.
MR. FORD. Isn't it the truth--as opposed to the perception
in the market that the subsidy goes to big banks--that the subsidy
goes to the little banks?
It seems to me [true] by definition, with
the surcharge.
MR. PARTEE. Well, take a look at January and let's find [out
in] February and we'll see who has been borrowing and how many pay the
surcharge.
MR. FORD. But the fact is that the size of the subsidy the
bank gets depends on whether or not they pay the surcharge; and the
smaller the surcharge, the more the subsidy.
MR. PARTEE.

True.

MR. FORD. The other element is that while this discussion is
leading us toward credit rationing of some sort at the window, we're
reacting to a public perception which is technically not the truth-which is that the subsidy goes to the big banks. There is a subsidy
for all the banks but the biggest; the subsidy is for the ones under
$500 million, item 1. The second thing is the way we administer the
window. If I understand it, in doing the rationing now, which we may

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want to change as you say, in some sense liability managed
institutions should not get in. Maybe I'm making this too strong-MR. PARTEE.

That doesn't exactly work out that--

MR. FORD. But you are sort of saying we should not have to
be aware of what they are doing to qualify. And we all have heard the
horror story about the guy who comes in and admits that he's managing
his liabilities, seeking to maximize his subsidy, and he's the one we
throw out. It's that kind of thing that I see as being-MR. PARTEE. Well, Bill, when I said rationing, I didn't
necessarily mean a rate control system that would be based on
administration. I think we can ration by having a more elaborate
price schedule. The price schedule might be associated with duration
and there might be more than just one surcharge. There might be rules
of the game. We could do what Fred suggests, except that would mean
technically that the institution whose surplus is dropping to zero
will pay the highest amount of borrowing so that-MR. SCHULTZ. We'd have to differentiate between emergency
and adjustment borrowing.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The most effective thing we can do to
affect bank behavior is to kick them out of the discount window on an
individual basis; otherwise they just don't give a damn. They'll go
on making all the loans they want to make.
MR. PARTEE. But at any rate, we could have a price schedule.
It doesn't have to be-MR. FORD. One thing I think I see--but I don't have any
research to prove it--is that the multibank holding companies seem to
send in their subsidiaries, many of which qualify for the biggest
subsidy of all, on a rotating basis. As a banker, from a profit
maximizing standpoint, that's the ideal thing to do if you're worried
about your shareholders' interests. That's another aspect to
[discount window] administration:
these different games that people
are definitely playing with us at the window. That frustrates me so
much about the present system that it leads me to question whether we
don't have to modify this procedure significantly in order to get away
from these games. The alternative is some form of rationing at the
window that at least is more honest than the present one.
MR. PARTEE. By the way, if they send bank A in to borrow,
how do they get those reserves distributed around their holding
company system?
MR. FORD. They can move anything they want.
the loans or the deposits show up wherever they want.

They can make

MR. PARTEE. So, they may do it through the loan portfolio.
If they do it by interbank lending, [the Reserve Bank] is supposed to
tell them they have violated our rules.
MR. FORD. Yes, but try to track that in reality when you're
talking about banks that have 30 or 40 subsidiaries and geniuses to

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manage their balance sheets, which we don't.
that, could we?
MR. SCHULTZ.

We couldn't keep up with

You have heard about fungibility, haven't you?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The conflict I see here, again, is that
the way to handle the perception and the reality of the subsidy in the
administration [of the window] is to make it easier to borrow with no
upper limit. If we make it easy enough, the subsidy will go away.
But that works against the short-term control of reserves and the
money supply. The more we work in the direction of short-term control
of the money supply, the more the discrepancy will appear. And I
don't know how to get out of this box.
MR. FORD.
MR. PARTEE.

It's a Catch-22.
We might as well accept it.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I think, though, that we can reduce
to some degree the size of the box, or the criticism that comes from
being in the box, if we move to some arrangement whereby the bank that
comes in the second or third time in too short a timeframe has to pay
the-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, of course that is precisely what we
did with the surcharge. I guess we have some question whether the
surcharge doesn't become in market practice the effective rate, so it
just moves above the surcharge and makes it look even worse against
the basic rate. What would happen if we moved the basic rate to 16
percent now? I don't know whether that would have a market impact or
not apart from the psychological one. What do you say?
MR. AXILROD. Yes, it would have a market effect.
few banks are borrowing at the surcharge now.

Well, very

MR. MORRIS. Well, the fact that they're not paying the
surcharge means that the rationing can work because there's this
reluctance to take the surcharge even though the surcharge rate is
still way below the fed funds rate. So, I think we have this new
problem in that I at least don't believe that we're going to be able
to have for long a different lending standard for the thrifts than we
do for the commercial banks. And, therefore, I think we've got to
give high priority to figuring out how to go about rationing on a
different basis than we customarily have at the discount window.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I've been thinking that probably the
best rate for an extended credit program for the thrifts would be the
3-month CD rate so that they get some earnings support but they're
still paying a market rate. If we move on the adjustment credit
program to having a surcharge that was a lagged average of the 3-month
CD rate, then we would also have something that seemed to make more
sense for the rate on the extended credit programs. It seems a little
more rational, anyway, and less arbitrary.
MR. FORD. Doesn't that get right into the same thing that
Paul was talking about:
the logic of the system?
Because, in effect,
that's partially moving to trying to peg the rate to the market to the
extent that those borrowings are a significant portion of the whole

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amount of borrowing. Once again it is attempting to go to a market
determined rate at the discount window and then we're back into the
box that Paul was talking about; we're trapped if we buy the current
system of control.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

I was talking there about the

extended--

MR. MORRIS. But you're not, if there's a reluctance on the
part of the bank to borrow at the higher rate, which I think will be
the case.
MR. PARTEE. But, Tony, if we're going to hold to the idea of
a basic discount rate of, say, around 13 percent [as it was] through
the whole fall and the CD rate runs up to 21 percent, as it did, and
we tie the extended rate to 21 percent, we're not going to be able to
get away with that. When the institution--say, one of your savings
banks in New York--borrows because it is in such difficult
circumstances and we say we will lend to them at one point under the
CD rate and that's 20 percent and the basic discount rate out there is
13 percent, they're going to cry bloody murder.
MR. FORD.

I'll take 90--

MR. PARTEE. If we have some way of showing them that some
frequent borrowers are paying 20 percent also-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We're not going to solve all the problems
of the discount window and discount rate at this particular forum. We
have to go to eat in a second, but the other two questions that just
occurred to me in terms of techniques--there may be others--are the
management and the handling of these interest rate bands that we have
and, finally, as a number of people have mentioned, the issue of
contemporaneous reserve accounting. Are there other issues that
should be surfaced here?
MR. CORRIGAN. I think the excess and deficiency carryforwards are worth thinking about. It does seem to me that having
some kind of an arrangement where we provide more flexibility there
with a penalty on deficiencies and a penalty in reverse on excesses-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think we're going to be able to
handle that one today. That may be something we can look at in the
future. I gather there is some sense--I'm not quite sure what it
means because it runs counter to the concern about the discount window
--about what would amount to forcing the banks more rapidly into more
debt when the money supply is excessive. I think there are advantages
in that approach. It's going to bring more instability in the very
short run; it might help in the long run.
MR. BOEHNE. What about this 50-50 rule about getting back on
the reserve path? Chuck made the point that there is a lot of
delegation to the staff. This seems to me to be one area where the
Committee might be able to make it more than 50-50 or less than 50-50
percent on-MR. PARTEE.

Or have it scheduled.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Well, that's all in that general framework

there.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. There is one additional thing that is
proposed legitimately and that's the question of whether, in the
operating procedure, the reserve path should be adjusted if M2 is
growing significantly out of line. At one FOMC meeting we did suggest
that the Desk place more emphasis [on M2] but in practice that is not
really factored in to the way the reserve path is drawn.
MR. SCHULTZ. We did the same thing with bank credit, too,
early last year. That was certainly part of the thinking.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Well, I think these are--

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. There are two ways of doing it. One
is to give 50 percent weight to M1 and 50 percent weight to M2, which
in effect means that we're giving a much smaller weight to the
nonreserveable deposit components of M2.
But it's a clear
arithmetical way. Another way is simply to instruct the Desk that
when M2 growth rates are deviating, a qualitative [adjustment] is [to
be] made in the reserve path, leaving it to their judgment how much,
but indicating that we do want a correction in the reserve path.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, this is a relevant question,
particularly right now when we don't know what M1 is. But let's
return to this subject unless somebody else wants to put something on
the agenda.
MR. GRAMLEY. I want to reformulate one of these [questions],
if I may. On the question of whether we should make an adjustment to
the nonborrowed reserve path in a different way than we've done
before, I think that could be addressed most fruitfully by saying:
What sorts of responses should we try to incorporate into the
operating procedures that push the money supply back toward the target
I say it this way because I think one can
level when it drifts off?
conceive of this as being done in two different ways. One is to
adjust the nonborrowed reserves between meetings more; and the other
is to have the Committee focus on where we are at each meeting and
where we want to be. And the latter will give us greater Committee
involvement, I think.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, there's a general question of
whether we want to be systematic at all.
If we're off course in
[hitting] a target by plus or minus 10 percent, how fast can we get
back, apart from the technique of how we get back there.
MR. GRAMLEY.

We can address this in 1 or 2 percent--

MR. WALLICH. Paul, could I suggest a topic--probably not a
very popular one?
I suggest we consider whether we want to publish
the directive immediately.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

What's the argument for that, Henry?

MR. WALLICH. I'm very much impressed by the continual
criticism in the press and the market that we have changed our policy.
They say the Fed has eased or the Fed has tightened and actually we've

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I think we could defuse that by stating it in
done nothing at all.
the policy record right away instead of 30 days later when nobody
reads it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'll add another one:
the money supply figures weekly?
MR. FORD.
list now?

Shall we publish

You do have the contemporaneous accounting on your

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes. We have quite a few on the list; I'm
now up to H. We're not going to be able to resolve all of these,
obviously, but we may get some sense on a couple of the key ones.
Let's return after lunch and concentrate on this for an hour or so.
MR. PARTEE.

The lunch is here?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Yes.
[Lunch recess]

[Unintelligible] there is a certain amount
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
of duplication that is unnecessary. And I would like to delegate to
President Solomon the task of giving us some recommendations as to how
we may maintain a detailed record for members of the Committee and
otherwise without excessive duplication. If you would give us
recommendations at an appropriate time in a coming meeting, President
Solomon, I would appreciate it.
SPEAKER(?).

Amen.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Just one more blow we're going to
strike in favor of deregulation [or] simplification. Okay.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Right. Now, I don't want to take all
afternoon on this subject that we are on, if we can avoid it. We have
to get to the business outlook and the long-range targets. The first
two subjects on my check list that we have been discussing are
nonborrowed reserve adjustments and the discount window--its
administration and the rate.
I get some sense that the feeling is
that perhaps a little more rapid adjustment on the nonborrowed reserve
[path] might be appropriate. I don't think we can sit here and write
a formula for it today. It may be desirable or not to have a formula
at some point. The discount window and discount rate, of course, are
explicitly a responsibility of the Board of Governors in any event.
But I was not encouraged by the discussion that we had this morning
that anybody has an ideal solution for getting out of the box that we
are in. And it occurred to me just at lunch that this is not a new
box either. Under the old operating technique we could have
maintained a penalty rate and we never did during these periods; and
the discrepancy got extremely wide every time we had a tight money
period. So, it's not exactly a new visual problem or real problem.
But it is a problem.
In any event, I suggest that we have had enough discussion of
that at this point, knowing that we have to come back to the
nonborrowed reserve issue anyway in connection with the explicit
decision at this meeting and subsequent meetings. And maybe we can do

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a little work on a formula. But I think there may be some dissenters;
I don't know because they haven't spoken.
MS. TEETERS. This would be a movement back more rapidly to
the nonborrowed [path] within the interest rate confines?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes. I'll get to the interest rate
confines, but at this point it's apart from that. I must say this:
The logic of this strict money supply control leads one in this
direction. I'm a little nervous about it probably for the very reason
that we haven't done it more rapidly in the past. We always get
nervous I guess, which is why we're on this technique at all, when we
are rather consciously [moving] the interest rate structure a tick.
And that's what we're doing when we [adjust the nonborrowed reserve
path].
But let me leave it; we'll come back to that quite explicitly
in terms of the particular decision today. We may want to say
something about it in general terms. As things now stand, I probably
would say in my report to the Congress that this is something we
probably will be doing. But that would not be quantified.
MS. TEETERS. This is a general question:
publish those studies?

Are we going to

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. My current thinking was to publish
something like Steve's summary, which is marked preliminary, with
appropriate modifications for clarity or whatever, as part of the
Humphrey-Hawkins Report. I haven't made a decision about publishing
the rest of it.
The rest of it may be a bit uneven. I don't know
whether it's-MR. GRAMLEY. We're obviously going to word this to make it
available for public use as soon as possible. There's a great deal of
interest in it; there's a lot of good material.
I think it does
credit to the staff and to the Board. I think it really goes a long
way in answering many of the criticisms.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, part of my problem--I just don't
know the answer to this--is whether the authors themselves think it is
in a form that it is really ready for publication, given the speed
with which it was done and so forth.
MR. AXILROD.

Do you mean the summary or the rest of it?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
the summary.

No, the rest of it.

I'm not talking about

MR. AXILROD. Well, I would view the rest of these as
virtually final, but semi-final drafts. I would like--and I think
also the authors would like--one more opportunity to review them
carefully for technical problems.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes. Well, I suspect, without even having
read them, that given the rate of speed with which they were written
the authors need at least another crack at them before we would want
to distribute them.

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MS. TEETERS. But even if we did some more editing, I agree
with Lyle that this is the sort of information that should be made
available to the public.
MR. AXILROD.

Oh, yes.

MR. ROOS. How would the disclosure of which of these
options, if any, the Committee agreed upon become public? Would that
be in your testimony to Congress?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes, I think my testimony will have to
touch upon all the things that we are now discussing. I don't know
what we would say about the discount window--maybe not much other than
At this
that it's a problem and that we're continuing to look at it.
point I would be inclined to say that there is a question, which is in
the summary, about the speed of the nonborrowed reserve adjustment.
Our tendency probably will be to lean toward faster adjustments rather
than slower. I can make that kind of comment without being very
I'm judging that this reflects the Committee's
precise about it.
sentiment at this point.
MR. AXILROD. Mr. Chairman, on publication I should mention
one thing. The summary memo, if we put that out, has a list of the
staff studies. So, if it's put out with the list of staff studies,
people will write in and ask for them.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't know whether we'd want a
list or not, but we'll look at that.
I don't see anything the matter
with it particularly. Certainly if we're prepared to put them out,
there's nothing the matter. But we can probably delay publication
anyway.
MR. ROOS. Paul, after we go down the laundry list, if
there's a certain amount of indecision on things that some of us think
should be reacted to more explicitly, procedurally would we express
ourselves here and so be recorded? Or [are our views] not going to be
recorded? We're not going to have a vote, I assume, on any of these
things, right?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm not sure any of these take a vote per
se. My thought now is that there would be a qualitative statement
about the speed of the nonborrowed reserve [adjustment].
The discount
window would be pointed to as a problem, but [I would say that] we're
not ready to propose anything explicit as a change. However, there
ought to be a frank recognition of the fact that there are problems in
that area.
The next thing I have on my list is the question of interest
rate bands. I think it is fair to say, explicitly or implicitly
though maybe more implicitly, that the speed of the nonborrowed
reserve reaction time--and in fact the handling of the discount window
can be looked at it the same way--reflects some concern about
overshooting one way or the other on interest rates and the fact that
that is undesirable. The interest rates bands--everybody has his own
view--I don't think have been terribly important. The closest they
came to being important was last spring. Every other time we reached
[the limit of the interest rate band] we changed the band. And we
probably would have changed it last spring if we had reached the limit

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more forcibly, but we teetered on the edge for a while. But I think
that is consistent with some implicit coloration in our minds of not
wanting to overshoot on interest rates too much; that is a factor in
how these other things are set.
[Steve], this interest rate band
question isn't one on which you made any particular proposal pro or
con in your summary, is it?
MR. AXILROD. No, only indirectly. At the end we suggested
that to the degree the Committee thinks the federal funds rate target
has any validity, it means narrower bands. Of course, I ought to say
that all the model work [assumes] unconstrained interest rates. With
unconstrained interest rates, as President Balles mentioned, their
model gives a little less interest rate volatility than ours does.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it seems to me that the really
operative question here, since I don't view these bands that we have
had as having constrained anything much, is whether anybody wants to
have narrower ones and actually have them be constraining. I suppose
it means-MS. TEETERS. Well, I was certainly opposed to raising them
and then taking them off this last round. Sure, we have moved them up
but we haven't moved them down to the bottom number; nevertheless, we
haven't hesitated to take the top off.
I think it's well known that
we could have gotten the same degree of restraint without having to go
to 21-1/2 percent interest rates. So, I'd be more interested in
seeing that the bands stick rather than that they become elastic.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm not quite sure how we would have
gotten the same degree of restraint. It may have been excessive, but
it wouldn't have been the same I don't think at that [unintelligible].
MS. TEETERS.
21-1/2 percent.

No.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

[Unintelligible]

it was excessive at

That's a little different from saying--

MR. GRAMLEY. I think the fact that the Committee has to get
together once we run into the upper or lower end of the range is a
useful procedure, even if the Committee decides ultimately to raise or
lower [the band].
It requires careful thought and another round of
decisions, and that's the sort of thought [process on] interest rates
that I think is important. The Committee ought not absolve itself of
responsibility for what is happening in the credit markets. Though I
think probably lowering the ranges would not be a good idea in terms
of public-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You say lower.

Do you mean narrowing the

range?
MR. GRAMLEY. Narrowing the range, I'm sorry. I wouldn't
want to lower interest rates at this time, as a matter of fact.
I
don't think narrowing the range is a good idea, but I wouldn't want to
widen the range because I do think that Committee review is a useful
function.
MR. SCHULTZ.
I think it's a particularly useful function at
times of extremes. It seems to me that most of the time the band

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doesn't make much difference. We don't pay too much attention to it.
It's easily changed. But there are times when it ought to bring forth
some very serious discussion. Last spring it did bring forth some
serious discussion on whether we should allow [the rate] to go lower.
We probably ought to have had those discussions earlier. And in the
last month or two it has been of some importance to think about the
level of interest rates. It seems to me that most of the time it
makes more sense to have the emphasis on the money supply, but there
are times when the interest rates get to be well worth considering
because they have a tendency to go to these extremes.
MR. WALLICH. I think the main disadvantage of the band is
that it gives some people a justification for saying that we're really
targeting on interest rates. Since I don't believe that that's the
case, I think that's a wrong criticism. But I think the usefulness of
the band exceeds the advantage of defusing their criticism. If one
were to defuse it, there would be some other criticism.
MR. PARTEE. Well, we could take care of that, though. We
could have in the directive a standard phrase that says the Manager
will inform the Chairman if it appears that the cumulative movement in
federal funds since the time of the meeting is likely to exceed 300
basis points, at which time the Chairman will decide whether or not to
call a meeting. That way we would never have a stated band that
people would look at. What we would have is a plus or minus 300 basis
points from where the funds rate started. So maybe we could improve
our public posture.
MR. WALLICH.

Well, that's an interesting suggestion.

MR. ROOS. If I may, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to go on record
as favoring total elimination of the interest rate bands. From the
conversation throughout this morning and in the studies and comments
that have been made and things that are thought--although who knows
what things are thought--I think there is an implicit awareness of
I believe that acts
explicit and implied interest rate constraints.
If we're
in a contrary manner to achieving our aggregate targets.
interested in consulting frequently on interest rates, I guess we
should also be interested in consulting if the money supply seems to
be functioning in an unpredicted manner. I think there's a very basic
contradiction in trying to control interest rates explicitly or
implicitly and achieving our monetary target objectives. And I would
express myself as favoring the total elimination of any specification
regarding interest rates.
MS. TEETERS. Well, I find that hard to accept. We're
getting to the point where we're transmitting very volatile [shortterm] interest rates into the long-term market. Even though we
haven't been able to detect it in the past 15 months, that has to be
something that is going to disturb all sorts of things over a longerterm period. I think we're just abrogating our responsibility if we
say we're not going to pay any attention at all to the interest rates.
MR. WALLICH. Well, Nancy, I agree with that. But at the
same time I recognize that the main volatility that carries into longterm interest rates comes from inflation and not from our procedures
because it is very implausible that we should be changing our policy

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from month-to-month even though that gets written up in various market
comments.
MS. TEETERS. We had the inflation before we changed our
procedure and it wasn't showing up to that degree in the long-term
rates.
MR. WALLICH.

It hasn't been so bad either.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. If we were to move to adopt new
recommendations immediately, then I think Chuck's formulation would
make more sense.
MR. WALLICH.

Yes.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

I'm not sure, but--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, the trouble with Governor Partee's
suggestion--it's good if you want to achieve the result that you want
to achieve--is that other people may have a real concern about [the
level].
If they are more concerned about a rise of 300 basis points
from 21 percent than they are from 15 percent, you have a problem.
MR. PARTEE. Then we'd have to say 200 basis points.
would be something to do.
MS. TEETERS.

That

I don't think so.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Yes, that kind of defeats the--

MR. GRAMLEY. I'm not quite sure how plus or minus 300 basis
points from the current level differs from the range of 600 basis
points around the current level.
MR. PARTEE.

We simply avoid saying what the range will be.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. But we haven't always been in the middle
of these ranges. Both in the spring [of last year] and just recently
we've been around the upper end of the range that we set.
MR. PARTEE.

We'd have to put it in the center.

MR. BALLES. I'd like to say, Mr. Chairman, that I am
intrigued by Governor Partee's suggestion. I hope it will get some
serious consideration. I would not be in favor of dropping the range
altogether, and that would be a way of getting out of the appearance
of having a range. I think it would give us a great deal of
flexibility and we could make the decision meeting-by-meeting as to
whether the [checkpoint] should be 300 or 200 or 400 basis points.
MR. FORD. From one meeting to the next? May I ask for a
clarification? Are you saying that whenever we have a meeting, we
state the monetary aggregate targets and then always have a proviso to
the Desk that the Manager will tell Paul any time we're going to move
300 basis points plus or minus from where the funds rate was when we
left the meeting? And that would call for consultation on the subject
of whether we would want to let the rates go?

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.
number if we wanted.

Yes.

And then we could change the 300 to a different

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If you change it, then I think you'll
really be detracting from the basis-MR. PARTEE. I have in mind having a standard of 300 basis
points. But in an exceptional case, such as Nancy referred to when
rates are at a very high level, we might want to constrain them.
MR. FORD. Since we meet on average every 5 to 6 weeks--I'm
just trying to remember the history of the market [rate movements]-that would have triggered a discussion on couple of occasions, right?
MR. GRAMLEY. It seems to me, however, that the market is
going to interpret your suggestion in a very different way. If the
fed funds rate on the day of the Committee meeting is 17.42 percent
and we say 300 basis points on either side, the newspapers would say
that they have figured out that the Fed's range is 14.42 to 20.42
It makes a lot more sense to say it's 14 to 20 percent. I
percent.
think that's what they're going to do. Then if we start playing games
and say we're going to narrow the range down to 200 basis points on
either side because we don't want rates to go up too far, they're
surely going to say we are playing the rates instead of the money
supply.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

I don't know how important all of

this is.
SPEAKER(?).
on it.

Is it important?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I think it could be.
What scale are you on here?

MR. PARTEE.
widen the range.

We could vary

My basic position is that I think we ought to

MR. SCHULTZ. My position is that we ought to stay away from
a mechanical approach. That's what gives us the most trouble. If we
don't retain some elements of judgment in what we do, I think we're in
trouble.
MR. BALLES.

I agree.

MR. SCHULTZ. I'd just hate to get hung up on any of these
I don't think any of them work.
mechanistic kinds of solutions.
MR. BOEHNE. I agree with that. There clearly is an
inconsistency in trying to control money and interest rates. But it
seems to me it is the job of this Committee to resolve the
inconsistency. And I think we ought to have ranges. Chuck's idea is
an interesting variation, but I would favor maintaining a range. If
it has to be raised or lowered, it seems to me that's what this group
gets paid to do, whether it's by a mechanism or--

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I would suggest that when we write
this report it should say that on balance the Committee wants to
retain interest rate bands. I would emphasize in the reporting that
these bands have not really been constraining, but in a number of
instances during the past year they have served as occasions for the
Committee to consider what it wanted to do. And the report should
note that virtually every time this happened, the range has been
changed. I think it has been changed every time.
MS. TEETERS.

Not the bottom of the range.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, did we ever have a consultation and
not change it? I don't think so. On that bottom, I don't read that
experience quite the way you do. We flirted with a conflict, but we
never really had it. Just about the time when we would have had to
have a meeting, interest rates began going up. We may have had a
meeting and not changed it but I don't know when.
MR. PARTEE. The fed funds rate is a constraint.
I certainly
approve of your saying this in public, but I think we need to
recognize that it's a constraint.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't know what you're saying
because I disagree with you in terms of these bands. We've changed
them every time we've come [to the limit of the band].
Now, I think
it is a constraint implicitly in our behavior in terms of rapidity of
movement. But I just flatly disagree with you that these outside
limits have been a constraint. I just observed that when we met and
said we had a problem [with respect to the interest rate constraint],
the constraint has been changed.
MR. ROOS.
Paul, when we discussed before the problems of
adjusting our reserve paths more quickly, it was specifically said
that one of the costs--to those who view it as a cost--is wider
fluctuations in interest rates. So, maybe we can convince ourselves
within this room that interest rates aren't a factor, but I think they
lurk in the back of Peter's mind and-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Now, wait a minute. They do lurk in the
background, and I don't deny that in terms of rapidity of
[adjustments].
All I am saying is that these bands themselves--I
ought to be in as good a position to know as anybody--have not
constrained [our actions].
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

Well, they do at 8 and 20 or 8 and 21

percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't know what would have happened.
What happened when we ran into 21 percent? We removed [the limit].
MR. RICE.

Well, at some point we might not.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
point we might not.

Well, that's why they're there.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
constraint?

At some

On the down side wasn't 8 percent a

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

That's debatable on the down side.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

I'd have to agree with you anyway,

but--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
down side.

The closest we came certainly was on the

MR. GRAMLEY. Instead of lurking in the background, they have
lurked in the foreground.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We were right on the edge.
clearest case when it could have been a [constraint].

That's the

MR. BALLES. May I ask, Mr. Chairman, whether you're
inferring that in your view we could get along without a range then?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. No, frankly, I think it's a good idea. I
would even question whether we should have removed it every time we
did. But we did.
MR. FORD. Well, if I may comment on Governor Partee's
statement that the range ought to be widened:
It seems to me that if
we're going to issue a report on changes in monetary policy for the
next year compared to last year, and if one of the things we're going
to say is that we are going to move faster against movements off the
path on reserves, there has to be a logical symmetry in that we have
to say something that is consistent with that on the other side.
Either widen the band or make a stronger statement that we will adjust
right away.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Again, I think the constraint has been
more an implicit one in that we have not wanted to move too fast in
the short run. And that is true whether we had a lot of room within
the bands or we didn't.
MR. PARTEE. Yes, in that sense it has been a constraint,
because we knew that a rapid adjustment in nonborrowed reserve paths
would affect the funds rate.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, that is true without question; but
I'd say that is true whether or not we're near or away from the-VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Well, I think there is consensus that
we all want a meaningful discussion when-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Well, we don't all.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. With a few exceptions. Well, I said
a consensus. I think it's a minor question as to whether to word it
in the traditional way or to word it as in Chuck's approach.
MR. PARTEE.
in emphasis.

Yes it's minor; I think there's a little change

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I think there is a real difference.
It would happen rarely, but there would have been a difference last
spring and summer and right now when in a sense a lot of people would

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want it asymmetrical. Your presumption is that it would be more
symmetrical. I detect that we do not have unanimity but a consensus.
[The next topic is] contemporaneous reserve accounting.
MR. BLACK.

Mr. Chairman, may I make a statement on that?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You may.

MR. BLACK. It seems to me that all these points we've been
making have a good deal of merit under the lagged reserve accounting
system. Anything we can do to make the volume of borrowing more
predictable within reason is certainly to be desired. I think it's
important that we adjust our nonborrowed reserve target more promptly,
as we agreed, to offset unexpected changes in borrowing. And I would
say we have to be prepared to use a pretty wide federal funds rate
range. But all of these things certainly seem to me still to engage
us in the very difficult practice of trying to produce a demand curve
and trying to say something about what the nature of that demand curve
for money really is. And I don't think we are going to be able to do
that very successfully. So to me the only real solution out of our
dilemma, if we really want to control the aggregates, is to move
toward contemporaneous reserve requirements. There is a way I think
that can be done--and this is just a tentative thought--that would be
palatable to our constituents. That would be to make the period about
one month but still require them to report their deposits daily. That
would reduce some of the burden of shifting from the lagged
[accounting], which is certainly easier for them to handle. And it
would also make it easier for us to control the total supply of
reserves because then our deviation in the volume of borrowing could
be offset more easily, particularly if it occurred in the first part
of the period. So, I think that's really something we ought to move
toward.
MR. SCHULTZ.

I don't understand.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm not sure I can think this through.
Let me ask Mr. Axilrod and it will give me time anyway. If we
lengthen the reserve averaging period--let's say it went from a week
to a month--and said it was contemporaneous, it seems to me we would
end up at the end of the period just where we are now.
MR. AXILROD. Well, I was trying to think that through.
think that would require yet another one of our studies of these
various proposals.
MR. BLACK.

I

Just accept it on faith, Mr. Chairman!

MR. AXILROD. I do think it results in the problem of
delaying reaction into the third or fourth week [with the banks
thinking] maybe the Fed will come and save them finally. But I would
have to think through whether that is not reproducing, in effect, a
two-week lag or something like that. We would just have to analyze
that carefully.
MR. BLACK. Well, I think it makes it possible to hit a total
reserves target. And if we're going to control the aggregates, I
think we have to be able to do it. We really can't do it as well as I
would like under lagged reserve requirements, although I think we can

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do better than we have been doing. And I say this as somebody who was
involved in introducing lagged reserve requirements; I have a bias in
favor of keeping them. But I think we now have a situation where we
can give the banks something that's almost as palatable and not have a
bad public relations effect and at the same time improve our control.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I must say my concern about this is not
any public relations effect or difficulties with the banks. We can
make the banks do what they have to do. My concern is that the logic
is probably to do this, but the logic may not be very strong. And we
may in a sense be promising [too much].
People will say we made a
great change and it may be that not much is different after we've made
the change except that we've complicated our own life a little as well
as the banks' lives. And we could get an adverse reaction because
nothing much has changed. That's the only thing that really bothers
me about this.
MR. BLACK. Well, there are a couple of positive things. One
is that I think we've tended to hide behind lagged reserve accounting
sometimes and used that as an excuse for not really pursuing our
aggregate targets very actively. I'd like to eliminate that little
temptation, which I think we all share. The second thing is that if
we did this, we'd get the monetarists off our back on that particular
issue and maybe they could then make some positive contribution toward
improving the control mechanism.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
SPEAKER(?).

That'll be the day!

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.

Yes, but I think that's--

I wish I thought it worked that way.

How about 100 percent reserves?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Ford.

MR. FORD. Well, you're right to be concerned about the
problem it creates for the banks--especially for a large branch bank
system--because I was involved [as a banker] in researching this when
it was discussed as a possibility by the Fed some time ago. We have
to give them warning if we are going to do this.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Oh, I think we have to assume that we will
have to give them substantial warning if we do this.
MR. FORD. I know that. But having said that, if we give
them warning, there's no question that the banks can gear up to
provide [the data].
As to the theoretical arguments on things like
the discount window and so on, there is disagreement among the
theoreticians as to how much goes toward getting us out of the box
that you and I were discussing earlier. But there's no question about
the direction. To some extent it does get us out of the box. Some
people say a lot; some people say a little. Therefore, given my
concern about the absurdities of the discount window operations with
thrifts thrown in and everything else that is happening in that area,
I feel it's only logically consistent.
I am a strong advocate of
moving, with proper notice to the banks, toward contemporaneous

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reserve accounting but not overselling it, though, because I think
you're right that if we oversell it, it could hurt us.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The logic is in that direction; it's just
a question of how much. It may be fairly trivial. That's my concern.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Will you feel a need to move that
quickly, in view of the fact that we're still trying to iron out the
reporting problems and the inconsistencies?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I assume if this is done, it's going
to have to go out as a proposed regulation for comment. Now, Bob
Black raised another question, which is a relevant question. If we're
going to make this change, should we consider any other change in the
reserve period or the carryover, and put it all out at the same time?
If we're going to do that, it's going to take a couple of months to
prepare the regulation, I suppose, because we would have to debate
these other issues too.
MR. FORD. Yes. And a complication might arise if we're now
allowing some of them to report quarterly. Could that complicate it?
MR. BLACK.

Yes, it does.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think the assumption would be that we
would just go on contemporaneous reserve accounting for the bigger
banks.
MR. FORD.

Okay.

SPEAKER(?).

Sure.

MR. CORRIGAN. It has been asked whether we're thinking about
bigger banks and contemporaneous reserves literally or with a one-day
lag.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. CORRIGAN.

A one-day lag.

The one-day lag.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Are we going to have more revisions
or more errors as a result of this move?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, we will have errors with that, which
We have estimates of errors on required
is a complication for us.
reserves, which we don't have very much of now. But as soon as we go
on contemporaneous reserve accounting, we're going to have lots of
errors in our own estimates of required reserves.
SPEAKER(?).
MS. TEETERS.
at the Reserve Banks?
MR. MORRIS.
MR. CORRIGAN.

Right.
Is this going to cause major operating problems

Yes.
Yes.

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MR. FORD.

Yes.

We need time just like the commercial banks.

MR. MORRIS.

A lot.

MR. BALLES.

There's a long lead time.

MR. CORRIGAN(?).

And a lot of programming.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's what Milton Friedman calls
"bureaucratic difficulties."
MR. BALLES.

That's because he doesn't know the facts of

life.
MR. GRAMLEY. Milton Friedman would argue that we should
impose the least cost on the private sector, too, except in this case.
MR. BLACK. It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that if we did
this, we wouldn't have to go through the process of trying to estimate
what the demand for money looks like, what it's shaped like, and all
those things. We would make our best estimate of the reserves it
takes to give us the [desired] growth in the aggregates. And what
happens is that the demand for money, whatever the shape [of the
curve] is, will determine the level of the federal funds rate.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, that implies that there's no
slippage either in our estimates or in the linkage. And we just had
this plus or minus 10 percent a month slippage.
MR. BLACK. No, I'm not ruling that out; I recognize that
there are slippages. But I think we'd come very close to hitting a
total reserves target, particularly on a monthly basis. And I don't
I think we
mean a flat, identical percentage increase each month.
would have to adjust that total reserves figure for the non-monetary
liabilities and what they used up or released in the way of reserves.
We'd have to construct the target path very much as we do now. But we
wouldn't have the problem of the banks being able to borrow and
[raise] the reserve targets.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. BLACK.
though, because-part.

extent.

Sure we would.

They can still borrow.

Well, they wouldn't [raise it]

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
How do you know?

all that far,

That's an expression of faith on your

MR. BLACK. Well, I think they could [raise it]
But just the lengthening--

to some

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, this is the whole argument. What
difference does it really make? The logic goes in your direction, but
I don't know why you think it's quantitatively important. Banks don't
determine the money supply; an individual bank doesn't.
It sits there
and sees what deposits it has today and it will come up with those
reserves tomorrow. Under CRR what we would be doing is that we would
make them come up with those reserves tomorrow, or at least in the

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present week, instead of two weeks later.
that a vast difference in bank behavior?

But why do you assume from

MR. BLACK. Well, the point that you frequently make is that
the banks are going to get the total reserves that they need that are
based on deposits two weeks earlier. And in this case, if a bank is
hell bent to make loans because it has loan demand, it's going to go
ahead and probably borrow some at the window. But we can offset that
during the period because we can cut the nonborrowed reserve part of
that. And that's going to set in motion a process regarding bank
credit that is going to reduce required reserves during that period.
There's no way we can reduce them under lagged reserves.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes, the increase in borrowing will set in
process a motion, but we can get that same increase in borrowing if we
I think at the present the
have the intestinal fortitude to do it.
main thing that would change, frankly, is that the market would be
making more of these judgments about what the level of borrowing was
So-because we wouldn't have the information fast enough to do it.
MR. WALLICH. Well, doesn't the borrowing begin two weeks
earlier under this system so that the adjustment comes faster?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. AXILROD.

Yes, all things equal.

Well, one week earlier.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

One week earlier.

MR. AXILROD. It's one week because of the way we operate.
That is, we don't wait. If deposits are running high and borrowing
has to be high for that four- or five-week period, we immediately put
that in. So, it's only if it happens the very next week instead of
waiting two weeks when the required reserves are technically higher
[that we] wait until the deposits are higher in that week. So the
effective lag is really cut down from two weeks to one week by the way
we operate.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it all goes in that direction.
it's just a question of magnitude.

But

MR. BLACK. Yes, I know. It's a matter of degree. And I
think we can operate under lagged reserves; I never would have
advocated that originally if I hadn't thought so. But I believe we
can do it a good deal better under contemporaneous; and I think the
longer period gives banks a chance to do some arbitrage over time that
might iron out some of the interest rate fluctuations that are of
concern to a lot of us around the table.
place?

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
Didn't we originally--

Well, why did we change in the first

MR. BLACK. It was a bank relations move, basically, Tony.
We conjured up a lot of reasons.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
accommodate the banks?

Now you no longer feel the need to

2/2-3/81

-64-

MR. BLACK. Not to the same extent. We were also operating
on a net borrowed reserve target, too. And we could hit that more
precisely [with lagged reserves].
It didn't have the same meaning, to
be sure, because required reserves had been determined on the basis of
deposits two weeks earlier. But it was easier to hit it. But the
basic reason was that it was very difficult, as Bill Ford said awhile
ago, particularly for the large banks with branch systems to know what
their required reserves were even by the end of the period. So they
estimated. And it's still-MR. FORD.

But the Fed did this in the late '60s, right?

MR. BLACK.

It was done for bank relations purposes mainly.

MR. FORD. Yes, but now it should be a lot easier to go back
to it technically because more of the banks are moving toward being on
line with their branches in terms of their EDP operations.
So it
should be a lot less painful if we reinstate it now than it would have
been with the same-VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Well, I don't really understand. I
can understand those of you who want to impose these extra burdens on
the banks because you think it's a major improvement to [monetary
control] but [not] those of you who think it's a very minor one.
I
don't quite understand why we're so concerned about not increasing the
burden on the banks in other areas but in this area it's okay. We're
going to get very minor monetary policy-MR. SCHULTZ.

There are some of us who do feel that way,

Tony.
MR. WALLICH. Well, it's a dilemma. We can say that we've
got all the instruments now to achieve the degree of money control
that we really want, say, over three months, so why improve the
techniques? But I think this is a speeding up. It may reduce
interest rate variability because certainly in the absence of an
action by the Desk it seems to have been econometrically demonstrated
that there is more instability of interest rates when we're up against
fixed reserve requirements than when we're up against requirements
that we can modify slightly during the week in question. If that
continues to hold--and I don't know if that's still the view--then I
think there is quite a payoff.
MR. SCHULTZ. I'm not sure I understood. You were saying we
get less interest rate variability with contemporaneous reserves?
MR. WALLICH.
[Yes, under] contemporaneous because, in the
lagged case, there's a given amount of reserves that the banking
system must get if the Fed doesn't supply them. Then the excess
reserves have to be worked down to zero, in effect, and carryovers are
created. Whereas if the banks are able by reducing their reservable
liabilities to reduce the amount of reserves required-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think that brings lower interest
rates, Henry. An individual bank can't reduce its reservable
liabilities.
It can do something on the assets side that reduces some
other bank's reservable liabilities. But that would be accompanied by
more pressure on the market.

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MR. GRAMLEY. What Henry is saying, I think, is that for any
given degree of precision of monetary control, we will have less
variability of interest rates.
Or, for any degree of variability of
interest rates, we get more precision of monetary control. In other
words, what is going to happen to the demand for reserves is that
under present circumstances the demand for reserves has elasticity
which depends only on the elasticity of demand for excess reserves.
What this is going to do is to introduce into the overall demand for
reserves an elasticity which comes from the demand for money. So
overall demand for reserves will be a little more elastic with respect
to interest rates than it was before.
MR. BALLES.

Right.

MR. PARTEE. What we get is a quicker change in interest
rates and, therefore, it doesn't have to be as large. It's a special
case of the general case that has been well postulated in
[unintelligible].
MR. AXILROD. There is an offset to that, I think. That's in
the intermediate run, as I was trying to say earlier. We might get a
little less variability because the process might start a bit sooner.
In the very first week banks extinguish some deposits instead of
borrowing all the money so there is a little less interest rate
[effect] than if we had to wait until the second week or the third
week. But in the very short run we might get more up and down jiggles
because by our mechanism now we sort of eliminate those by estimating
the demand for borrowing and spreading it over the weeks [of the
reserve adjustment period]; so we're accommodative to the up and down
jiggles in deposits. We will know those up and down jiggles in
deposits under contemporaneous reserves and thus we're likely to get
more up and down jiggles of the funds rate with contemporaneous
reserve accounting, I believe.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Anybody want to--

MR. SCHULTZ. And there are some who believe that those
swings would be rather extreme.
MR. CORRIGAN.
MR. AXILROD.

That's right.
Well, they may be.

MR. BALLES. Is there anybody around the table who remembers
how things worked prior to 1968 with regard to the jiggles?
MR. GRAMLEY. We were setting fed funds rates then and
[experienced] no problems.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. When we're setting the federal funds rate,
it won't make any difference. That's right.
MR. CORRIGAN. Part of the problem in terms of pre-1968, too,
is just the amount of churning in the banking system then as opposed
to now. The Fed-wire didn't even work prior to the--

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MR. AXILROD. Well, I think we were essentially on a variety
of targets, but the way to describe them all was "the tone and feel of
the market."
MR. CORRIGAN. No, I mean just the turnover of financial
assets in the [banking] system.
MR. AXILROD. Yes, and we'd smooth that out.
It was less
jiggling in some sense because the Desk was tending to offset the
jiggling.
MR. FORD. As I recall the theoretical discussion--some of
the staff members may be able to enlighten me on this--one of the
factors that keeps us from getting a big payoff for going to CRA is
the difference in reserve requirements among different size banks.
Isn't it right that that is another source? And with the new law,
that tends to smooth those differences. Maybe that, too, would help
reduce the noise that comes with moving to CRA.
MR. BLACK.

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

MR. FORD. Isn't that right in terms of the theoretical
arguments? Yes, but why doesn't CRA give an immediate linkage?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, that would make a difference. But I
think the biggest single source of slippage is going to remain the
discount window. Nothing in going to CRA says that they can't borrow.
MR. BLACK. But we can squeeze them by cutting the
nonborrowed reserves.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. BLACK.

Sure we can.

Do you think we can't really do that now?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Yes.

MR. BLACK. We've got to let them have the total reserves
they need to meet their requirements.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes, but we squeeze them by making them
borrow more. And that has been the limitation on our operations now.
We didn't want to go very fast. Now we can go faster within the week
but I-MR. BLACK. There's nothing in this procedure that would
preclude putting in a range on the federal funds rate if we did not
want to offset the borrowings that the banks would have the option of
entering into. We would not have to do that fully. I'm just saying
that we could do it virtually 100 percent over a monthly period if we
wanted to. Now, that might involve more volatility in interest rates
than a lot of people would like to see. But at least the mechanism is
better because we don't have to fool around with trying to estimate
the demand for money, which I just don't think we're ever going to be
able to do. The appetite in the short run for money is just
unpredictable in my judgment. And to me the necessity of doing that-coming up with a federal funds rate that would tell us what the
borrowing is going to be--is a key part of the present processes. And

2/2-3/81

-67-

I think we can improve it,
we've been notably unsuccessful in that.
but I don't think we can ever be terribly successful with it.
MR. AXILROD. Mr. Chairman, I think I should add--because it
comes out of President Black's comments--that we have a heck of a time
predicting the demand for money. But we have [difficulty]--and that
was one of the results of the research--predicting the supply factors
that are affecting what money is going to be, such as deposit mix,
demand for borrowing, and things like that, given interest rates and
GNP and money. Contemporaneous reserve accounting might strengthen
that linkage but there are a lot of other factors that would argue for
permitting the borrowing to do some of the work, which would tend to
offset the misestimates on deposit mix and things like that. So, I
wouldn't think that going to contemporaneous reserve accounting would
automatically mean we're going to be better off because we can chase
borrowing up and down. A certain amount of borrowing seems necessary
to offset our own multiplier misses, so to speak.
MR. ROOS.

But doesn't your--

MR. BLACK. I agree with that, Mr. Chairman; I didn't mean to
suggest otherwise. And I didn't mean to suggest that a one-month
period was absolutely right because we haven't had a study on that.
But under the present procedures, we have to estimate a demand and a
supply function for money to operate, if I understand correctly.
Under CRR, all we have to do is estimate the supply. We have
eliminated the most difficult estimating problem. But far be it for
I
me to say that the estimating problem would not still be difficult.
think it would be, but I think it would be more manageable. It takes
a lot for me to eat crow on this because I was involved, as some of
you may remember, in this [move to] lagged reserve accounting. And I
But it was done to make
now think we probably were wrong on it.
things easier for the banks, basically.
MR. WALLICH. Is the reason we don't have to estimate the
demand function that the volume of the money can adjust during the
period?
MR. BLACK. That's right. We figure out what volume of
reserves we think it would take to get the growth in the money supply
we want and put out that volume of reserves. There are things that
can offset it, as we all know. Borrowing can go up and we'd have to
offset that; or we could have an unexpected change in the level of
float and we'd have to offset that. I don't mean to suggest that we
can hit it with perfect precision. But if we do [go to CRR], it seems
to me that the demand for money basically determines the level of the
federal funds rate.
I recognize, as I said earlier, that some might
want to put a constraint on that. But we could certainly-MR. PARTEE.

We've just been talking about that.

MR. BLACK. Yes. Not everybody wants to do that; I'm just
saying that some want to put a constraint on it. But we could do
that, which means that we would not pursue the supply of reserves as
actively as, say, Larry Roos would like or as I would like. We would
at least tip our hat toward what this procedure was doing in the way
of creating volatility in the federal funds rate. We would diminish
the ardor of our pursuit for a while in deference to what it was doing

2/2-3/81

-68-

to interest rates. I think that's perfectly compatible and a person
can argue for that. As I admitted to Lyle a while ago, I think these
large gyrations we've had in interest rates have been very upsetting
to businessmen who are trying to plan, and I would like to see those
gyrations eliminated. The best way to eliminate them is to do what
we've said we wanted to do: Get the aggregates down to a lower rate
of growth so that we get rid of some of the inflation. I think that
will do more to remove volatility in long-term rates than anything
else. That's something I can't prove empirically but it certainly
seemed to be true in 1960-64 when we did have a relatively low rate of
growth in the aggregates.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let me just ask about the extremes. I'll
ask [for you views] symmetrically, but I have to start with one
extreme first. Who feels very strongly that they would like to go to
contemporaneous reserve accounting?
[Secretary's note: Messrs.
Black, Ford, Roos and Winn raised their hands.]
MR. BALLES.

And the next question is who is not at least

strongly--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, let's have the other extreme now.
Who feels strongly that we should not?
[Secretary's note:
Mr.
Gramley raised his hand.]
MR. GRAMLEY.

On the basis of cost to banks alone.

MR. SCHULTZ.

Very strongly or just strongly?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
on the other side.

The same amount of strength that I asked

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
MR. CORRIGAN.
[MR. BOYKIN.

I think I will too.
I will also.]

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
and strongly opposed.
MR. SCHULTZ.

I'll join Lyle.

I'm on the margin between moderately

Yes, I'm with Tony.

If he's going to raise his

hand-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. BLACK.

Wait a minute.

We may be--

I hope none of you will tell [Irv] Auerbach how I

voted!
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You have listened to the discussion,
including the point that Bob Black made that if it turned out that we
had an excessive amount, however defined, of instability in the
federal funds rates from day-to-day that we might want to change our
techniques and constrain that more directly. Now let me ask:
Given
all the discussion, who would favor going in this direction enough to
want to make the change? That includes the people who want very
strongly to do it.

2/2-3/81

-69-

SPEAKER(?).

When?

SPEAKER(?).

With an announcement?

MR. FORD. We assume this is with time for everybody to get
their acts together?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
SPEAKER(?).
MR. WINN.

Yes, with adequate time and all the rest.

I don't understand this.
I don't know what we're voting on.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Considering the disadvantages and how you
appraise them, you are voting--whether you feel strongly or weakly-on whether on balance you'd make the decision to go [to CRR].
MR. PARTEE.

In due course.

MR. CORRIGAN. Well, on balance, if we did something with
deficiencies and so forth, I'd go.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
because it says--

Yes, but you just voted in the opposite

MR. CORRIGAN. No, no. Just [on changing] the lagged
reserves regime itself. But I think if we did some adjustments-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, all right, just on [changing] lagged
reserves then. Put your hands up once more. I just want to get some
sense of how many.
[Secretary's note: Messrs. Balles, Black, Boehne,
Ford, Guffey, Morris, Partee, Roos, Wallich, and Winn raised their
hands.]
Okay, let me ask the opposite; it should be all the rest. On
balance, who would not go, either strongly or weakly?
MR. PARTEE.

Isn't somebody going to be undecided?

MS. TEETERS. Yes. Actually, I'm just indifferent.
argued we will proceed with-SPEAKER(?).

It puts you in the perfect position.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
indifferent.
SPEAKER(?).
for it.

We've

Well, all right; you're permitted to be

Can we vote for indifference?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We have a majority who would like to go
The next question would be-MR. BOEHNE.

When?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. And how? And would you raise all these
questions about the reserve averaging period and the-MR. AXILROD. The Board has already announced it is thinking
tentatively about doing it by September of this year.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.

I know.

Yes, in principle.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I understand.

MR. PARTEE. But, certainly, the carry-forward and carry-back
would have to be a part of all that.
MR. CORRIGAN. If we got into operating that way, we really
would need to look at the whole ball of wax.
MR. GRAMLEY. What do we gain in terms of what you want for
monetary control? That's why we're doing this.
MR. PARTEE.

Yes.

MR. GRAMLEY. If we go ahead and lag it all over the place
with carry-forward and carry-back, the whole purpose of considering
reserve requirements-points.

MR. PARTEE. Yes, absolutely. We'd have to weigh the pinchI'm not arguing that we would do so much carry-forward.
MR. CORRIGAN.
MR. PARTEE.

No.
But it would do away with the whole effect.
No, it just provides another safety barrier.

MR. CORRIGAN.

MR. PARTEE. But we are going to have to study the question
to see whether they are pinch-points.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
didn't you?

You did a memorandum on this a year ago,

MR. AXILROD. We've had several on this subject of carryforwards and carry-backs.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm trying to remember. Do we have any
study in the various studies on contemporaneous reserve accounting
that brought these together?
MR. AXILROD.

Do you mean the carry-forward and carry-back?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The carry-forward, carry-back, and the
change in the reserve averaging period.
MR. AXILROD(?).

Mr. Lindsey?

MR. LINDSEY. We considered all those issues, except for
lengthening the reserve averaging period, in a memo that went to the
FOMC about nine months ago.
MR. AXILROD. But we could put all this together again, and
we certainly would, prior to further discussion by the Board. That
would be the intention, I assume.

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MS. TEETERS. Steve, if we lengthen the carry-forward/carryback, doesn't that increase your difficulty of estimating reserves at
any one point? Doesn't your estimating procedure get more distorted?
MR. AXILROD. We have never been able to convince ourselves
on that. It's a fine point as to whether widening those offsets the
advantages of going to contemporaneous accounting, if you think the
advantage is better control of the money supply in the short run. CRR
does tend to make our multiplier a little less loose, clearly.
MR. SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I want
everything at once. It seems to me that it
move more rapidly on nonborrowed reserves.
practically everybody say they wanted to do
MR. WALLICH(?).

to argue for not doing
makes a lot of sense to
I thought I heard
that.

Not me.

MR. SCHULTZ. Well, I said practically everybody. I could
have said everybody who counted, but I was trying to be nice!
MR. WALLICH.

I'm wounded!

MR. SCHULTZ.
If we throw all these other changes in there
all at one time, I'm not sure that we're going to know what the heck
is doing what.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The posture we are in now, if I recall it
accurately, is that we have said we don't want to do this right away
because of the Monetary Control Act. And, if we ever do it, we will
give the banks a lot of notice and all the rest. We are seriously
contemplating it but we haven't made up our mind.
MR. AXILROD. That's right.
[The announcement of the Board's
tentative posture] had a slightly positive cast rather than a negative
cast in it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes. Among other things, this is a Board
of Governors decision. But I'm just trying to figure out how we can
advance the ball or kick the ball back in terms of what we say in
connection with the Humphrey-Hawkins report. We can put a more
positive cast on it and say an appropriate regulation is being drawn
up, which the Board would have to agree to subsequently. We can say
we are considering these other things and we plan to publish a
[proposed] regulation but it's short of an absolute decision. We can
put a much more positive cast on it, but we can't say we absolutely
have decided on it anyway if we're going to put it out for public
comment.
MR. PARTEE.

We will have to publish a [proposed]

regulation.

MS. TEETERS. But there was a flavor [in our announcement]
that we wouldn't consider it until September.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I would assume that if we began right now
to consider it, we'd have to consider some of these other matters and
couldn't do it short of six months anyway.
MR. BLACK.

Yes, that's what I had--

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. But we have to get comment [from] the
banks and give them time to get prepared.
MR. BLACK. I think Governor Schultz has come up with a
sensible suggestion for most of us. Going with what he said is all we
can do for a while anyway. We could not switch to this any time soon.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, just to pick a round number, I think
we're not talking about [making a decision] before six months.
MR. BLACK. No. But in the meantime, I would favor doing
what he suggested as an interim step. And if things turn out better,
I have long had a bias in favor of
then maybe we don't need to do it.
lagged reserve accounting, but-VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. What are you going to tell your
critics next year if you're going to take care-MR. BLACK.

This would be lowering requirements.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We on the Board will discuss this against
One possible outcome is, in effect,
this background [discussion].
announcing that we are going to publish a regulation for comment and
consideration.
MR. ROOS. May I make one observation? In countering what
Fred said, I don't think this is a matter of our throwing everything
at them at once. If you recall--and maybe I'm hung up on this--the
President, the present Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Stockman, and
others coming into this Administration specifically suggested that we
free interest rates and that we go to contemporaneous reserve
accounting. In other words, they [listed] a number of the things we
are talking about. Now, we certainly are independent of them. If, as
a result of this effort today, when the Chairman goes up to Capitol
Hill all we do is say that we are going to try to adjust our
nonborrowed reserves a little more quickly, it will be awfully obvious
to people who are aware of the several things that were suggested that
we really haven't moved on any of them very emphatically. So, I think
we're going to catch more flak if we merely do that one thing than be
in any possible danger of being accused of throwing too much at them
at once, if that makes any difference. In the minds of the financial
press, or portions of it at least, as well as the incoming
Administration, there are rather specific views that the two or three
or four changes that we are discussing today are necessary for the Fed
to conduct monetary policy in a brave new manner. And I think the
omission will be as obvious as throwing in too much. This is just
said in a friendly way to give the opposite point of view.
SPEAKER(?).

If it works.

MR. SCHULTZ. I would remind you of the recent interview that
Newsweek had with Bill Martin in which he ended up saying that he
doesn't know much about monetary policy but he knows a lot more about
it than most other people and he spends most of his time trying to
combat simplistic solutions. And it seems to me that there are an
awful lot of simplistic solutions being offered. I'm not convinced
that those who are criticizing what we are doing know more about it
than we do around this table.

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MR. BALLES.

Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

If I may move to item E.

MR. BALLES. Could I say just one fast word? When the Board
does consider this matter, I hope it will give serious consideration
to Bob's proposal. Among other things, it certainly would eliminate
the frantic settlement dates that we would have under a one-week
reserve period. That would greatly diminish the burden on both the
Reserve Banks and the reporting banks, if we could get what are said
to be the advantages of CRA. I view them as being moderately
promising. But to do it on the one-month basis rather than an every
week basis I think has an awful lot of merit. It certainly deserves
more consideration in my view.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, the only thing that strikes me about
that offhand, without having thought it through, is that all the
adjustments get delayed until the end of the month, and there would be
a tremendous crunch at the end of the month. That would be worse.
But we'll look at it.
MR. PARTEE.
with this.
MR. BLACK.

I think the Committee has had some experience
But they have a one-month long lag.

Which target do we
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Next on my list is:
emphasize? We have a particular problem--and I don't know how far we
can carry this outside of the specific decision we have to make about
targets this year--when, for institutional reasons, we don't have as
good a handle on what M1 is doing as we might like. Who would like to
address themselves to this subject of which target? I suppose we
could say the general question is: How many targets do we announce?
I've become increasingly disenchanted with M1
MR. MORRIS.
[in its various forms] as a monetary policy target, starting back in
the fall of 1978 when for six months it was giving us misleading
guideposts to monetary policy. It seems to me that what we're trying
to control with monetary policy is nominal GNP and that, therefore, we
ought to use as our target something that is more closely related to
nominal GNP. I think the broader aggregates are more closely related.
So, I'm in favor of getting away from M1 because of its short-term
instability--because the noise factor is so much louder in M1 than in
the other aggregates. And I think the fact that we have this NOW
account problem this year provides us with an ideal opportunity for
chucking M1.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I understand everything you're saying.
M1, very recently anyway, has [not] been very closely correlated with
"That's
nominal GNP. But how do you answer the fellow who says:
fine, but we can't control M2"?
MR. MORRIS. Well, sitting around this table today, we have
heard discussions to the effect that we really don't control M1 with
reserves--that we control it with interest rates. If that's the case,
it seems to me that we can control M2 or M3 as well with interest
rates. I am not persuaded that the broader aggregates are less
controllable, in fact, than the narrow ones.

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MR. WALLICH.

They're mostly controllable by controlling the

economy.
MR. MORRIS.
MR. WALLICH.

Well, so is M1 fundamentally.
You know there is the result--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. WALLICH.

With M1 I think--

I would have thought M1 had some independent

impact.
MS. TEETERS. But even if we aimed for M2, our control
mechanism lever is still M1.
It has to be.
MR. MORRIS.
MS. TEETERS.
is lower M1.

Why?
Well, if M2 overshoots the only thing we can do

MR. ROOS. Haven't there been studies that have shown there is
a much closer relationship between the narrower aggregates and nominal
GNP than the broader aggregates? May I ask that question of my friend
on my right?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Mr. Axilrod now tells us that one can
produce a study to show anything, I guess.
MR. AXILROD.

I think Mr. Davis has.

MR. MORRIS. The fact is that I asked my staff to give me a
chart of M3 velocity compared to M1 velocity.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, just to clarify this:
If you just
look at the simple relationship with no lags, it is clear that M2 has
a much closer relationship. I think everybody would agree with that
recently. But you're saying that if one makes a complicated enough
equation with lags and so forth and interest rates, yes-MR. AXILROD. Well, with regard to a predictable relation
between money and GNP, the velocity of M2 has shown very little change
in the last couple of years. But [the problem] gets very hard when
Then, what are
one puts oneself in another world of controlling [M2].
the relationships? In the present world in which we live, the
interest rates that are available on the instruments in M2 move very
easily with the market. They have been designed that way. When you
start controlling M2 and market interest rates go up, the [depository]
In my mind--and I may be
institutions raise their interest rates;
wrong--if we really actively control M2, I fear that we'll get much
more interest rate volatility out of that than one might think. When
you are looking at a world where we weren't trying to do that, M2 sort
of goes along with the more moderate movements in interest rates
relative to GNP that we were having. So I think it's much more
complicated than just looking at the past history of these
relationships. I'm probably not being clear, but-MR. MORRIS. Well, I think I understand what you're saying.
Nonetheless, the image in the public mind and in the mind of the

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Congress of what monetary policy did in the last year, for example, is
closely identified with the tremendously erratic jags in M1. We got
some undulations in the broader aggregates, but we didn't get anything
like that kind of movement. To stick with a target that has as much
noise as M1 does is not a very rewarding exercise.
MR. AXILROD. May I just make one final point, Frank? I
don't want to bore the Committee, but what I'm trying to say is that
M2 in 1980 didn't vary quite as much as M1 did. But [what would have
happened] if we had been trying to keep M2 from doing what it was
doing? Then we would have had, I think, even more interest rate
variability because the market would have had an easier job working to
offset [our actions] because the [depository] institutions could
change the interest rates on the deposits in that aggregate. If we
had worked policy your way, that might have generated a lot more
interest rate variability and, for all I know, a lot more money
variability. The reason is that to reduce M2 growth sufficiently we
would have been putting most of our pressure on demand deposits
because institutions would have been raising their interest rates to
get more of the other deposits [in M2].
MR. MORRIS. Well, I would be more inclined on the broader
aggregates to use M3 than M2.
MR. AXILROD. Well, for either one, I think that's the issue
that it tends to bring up.
MR. PARTEE. I wouldn't want to do anything too shocking
about this, Frank, until I understood more about the British
experience. They have had something like a 22 percent increase in M3,
about twice their guideline. But M1 rose 6 percent last year, which
is much more consistent with what was happening in the economy.
MR. SCHULTZ. Yes, but I'm not sure you can make that
comparison, because they had--what do they call it--the corset?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. SCHULTZ.
don't know-SPEAKER(?).
overshooting.

Yes.

Well, they had some other things and I just
Well, they haven't been [unintelligible]

MR. PARTEE. Yes. But it's very possible that there might be
a tendency for people to move out of long markets and into short
markets for both borrowing and holding financial assets.
It would
have the effect, within the context of a particular increase in total
credit, of being more in the form of M3.
It could be the corset or
anything else that would occur. And that would be totally
I think the only way we could control it, as
uncontrollable by us.
Steve says, is by reducing the growth of narrow money to the point
that we got interest rates high enough to have to turn them off to
short markets as well.
MS. TEETERS. Steve, didn't you have an experience when you
were trying out the different control measures that as you moved the
control from one of the instruments to the other, in effect, what it

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did was to move the variability to the instruments that were
uncontrolled?
MR. AXILROD.

Yes.

MS. TEETERS. So, we are not getting rid of the variability
by changing our target; we're just moving it to some other instrument.
MR. AXILROD. That's what led me to try to put controlling M2
in those terms because that might be shifting whatever variability we
had in M2 somewhere else, so to speak. It would be in demand
[deposits] then, with possibly even more variability in M1 and, as a
result, even more variability in interest rates than we are observing.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Didn't I see somebody speculating on the
British experience that they might have had slower growth in M3 if
interest rates were lower?
MR. TRUMAN. Well, the thought there is what was referred to
as "a perverse elasticity."
The work that we've done on that suggests
that there is not. That was something that was looked at as we were
redefining the aggregates to see whether there was a sufficiently
perverse elasticity. It's possible that there is some, but that has
not been found yet.
MR. GRAMLEY. It seems to me, as a minimum, that we need to
ask the staff to take out the components of M2 that are not in M-1B
and subject them to some analysis of their cyclical pattern. What
does it look like? How sensitive are those components to rates of
interest and so on? There are some things that go in opposite
directions.
MR. WALLICH. I think we did that once before and we found
that the non-M1 components in M2 did not contribute anything to the
relationship of M1 and income.
MR. PARTEE. That's right.
[Unintelligible] we did in that
committee you'll remember. And there was no improvement in
controllability by moving from M1 to M2.
MR. SCHULTZ.
MR. PARTEE.

When was this?
Oh, a year or two years ago maybe.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, we heard Frank expressing one point
of view on one side. Are there those who are 180 degrees away and say
we ought to forget about M2 and M3 and bank credit and so forth?
MR. CORRIGAN. Do we know anything more, Steve, about where
NOW account money is coming from?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Let's get into that later.

MR. SCHULTZ. Well, I don't know. Was Frank arguing that?
I'm not sure I understood. Were you arguing that we ought to target
on M2 and-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Or M3.

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--M2 or M3 and that we ought to replace the
MR. SCHULTZ.
single variable of M-1B that we're targeting on with another single
variable? And are you going to the extent of saying that we just
publish that one? If so, I can agree with you partly. I think the
Kaufman idea that we need to look at much broader [aggregates] and
that we need to look at credit makes some sense. But there are all
kinds of problems in that. It seems to me that we can't do very much
better than to target on the M-1B that we're using now and look at the
other aggregates, including bank credit, as judgmental factors.
I think 1981 is going to be a year when none of
MR. MORRIS.
us is going to have the faintest idea what M1 really means.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

We'll get back to that in a minute.

MR. PARTEE.

I understood Frank to say he wants to target on

MR. MORRIS.

Or M3.

M2 or M3.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Just in terms of a more general sense of
the meeting, if I detect it correctly, the view is that we will remain
rather eclectic on this as a matter of principle but that some M1
measure continues to have a particularly heavy bearing as an operating
matter. We may modify that in the light of the particular decision we
But as a general
have to make now. M1 is particularly [distorted].
principle--though we had one on one side and one on the other side--I
assume everybody else is in the middle, which is the view I just
attempted to express.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. At previous meetings, I had taken
Frank's position. But I've been thinking it through and I believe
it's a little dangerous to target on M2 or some other broad version of
I think people will still be looking at the M1 components of
[money].
the M2 number. And we're still going to have to be open to much
It is a
criticism. Also, I'm impressed by Steve's earlier point:
cumbersome variable to target because we can only operate on part of
So, my instinct would be to go ahead and target the same Ms that
it.
we did last year and adjust the targets for the NOW accounts. We'd be
publishing only the raw data and then periodically we would make a-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We'll get into the specifics of what we
will do [with the targets for this] year in a minute. You wanted to
say something, Bob?
MR. MAYO. Yes, I just wanted to say that I think one of the
brightest things this Committee ever did was to start the targeting
procedure not only with ranges but with a family of targets. And this
is absolutely the worst time in the ten years I've been here to
abandon that and to seek, as some people on the Committee want to do,
a single aggregate that is better than the others. They are only
[I don't care] if someone
marginally better or marginally worse.
wants to say that it's cowardly to seek refuge in a family of
aggregates with disparate movements and admit that we are feeling our
way in this; I think that is the honest approach.
opinion.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I think you are citing a general
It's clear enough, subject to any change we have to make

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this specific time because of the confusion about M1.
to that later.

But we'll get

MR. BALLES. Particularly in 1981 it would be pretty risky to
bear down on just one aggregate. But could we perhaps consider
simplifying the family? I'm not sure, for example, whether as we go
into 1981 it will still be necessary to track M-1A. We know there are
going to be some very massive shifts out of it because there already
have been at least some.
It's going to look really weird to set up a
target abstracting from changes, given what may show up in reality.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let's go to that when we look at 1981. I
think it's a relevant question. Anything else on the general
principle? We are remaining eclectic. A question arose in the course
of these studies; it doesn't need to be systematized, but somebody may
The staff detected, as a matter of
want to say something about it.
empirical research, that the targets that the Committee set tended to
move one-third of the way back toward where they were supposed to be
per month. Am I expressing that correctly?
MR. AXILROD.
SPEAKER(?).
MR. AXILROD.

I think that's right.
For the long term?
Back to the midpoints of the long-term ranges.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think this was consciously thought
out or very explicitly thought out. I may be overstating this, but
did I understand that the staff judgment that emerged, considering the
implications for interest rates and all the rest, was that that did
not seem, for better or worse, an unsensible way of doing it?
MR. AXILROD. That's right. Looking at the monthly money
market model simulations, that was kind of a tradeoff. If you tried
to get back faster than that, the assurance of hitting your long-run
target wasn't all that much greater [and that needed to be weighed
against] the probable increase in money market rate volatility.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't really think this requires
any decision because we can always make it at any particular meeting,
as we have in the past. But I thought it was interesting to convey
this sense of what presumably we had been doing subconsciously. I
don't know if anybody wants to raise a question about it or
systematize it or whatever.
MR. BLACK. Isn't there some conflict between that and
adjusting the nonborrowed reserve target to a larger extent and
perhaps more frequently?
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON(?).
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
that, Mr. Axilrod?

No.

Well, I don't know.

What do you say to

MR. AXILROD. I'd say that the first thing had to do with the
Committee's targeting procedure. The second had to do with the
success of hitting it, which wasn't all that great.

2/2-3/81

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

And they weren't too closely related?

MR. AXILROD. The Committee targeted fine, but the aggregates
didn't behave quite as targeted. If they had, we probably would have
had more interest rate volatility.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Just to rationalize those two things, Mr.
Black, what we have to be saying is that it may have been logical to
set the target to move a third of the way back. But we didn't change
the nonborrowed reserve [path] fast enough to support the actual
numerical target that we had set.
MR. BLACK.
confused on this.

Yes, I see the distinction.

I was somewhat

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. It's rather natural that we would end
up trying to get a three-month correction, isn't it, simply because of
the way we look at these, which is to see where we come in at the end
of that quarter and then to try to get back on path?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I think that's why we did it, yes.

MR. AXILROD. Yes, there were some times when it might have
been six months, but it was-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think we have to sit here and
decide we're going to have a fixed policy or that it should be
different. But apparently this was systematic enough in our
unconsciousness so that it could be commented on, if anybody wants to
comment on it.
MR. CORRIGAN. One of the things that bothered me about that
was this:
The report made the argument that we didn't, through our
actions, build in a cyclical pattern of money [growth].
That is, the
things that we did didn't create their own cycle. I just had some
trouble rationalizing that three-month lag, [given] the very low
interest elasticity of money demand in the short run, with the
conclusion that the practice itself didn't help to generate the cycle.
If we only adjust-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, the thing that bothers me the most,
as just a simple observation of last year, is whether we were
generating a cycle. That is the question we're now raising. And when
I don't probe too hard, the staff tells me that we weren't. But I
don't know whether I feel comfortable with that.
SPEAKER(?).

I don't.

MR. CORRIGAN. Again, those two things, the one-third type
reaction coupled with the very low short-run interest elasticity of
money demand, seem to me to reinforce the casual observation that
maybe we were creating--creating is too strong a word--contributing to
that cycle of money growth itself.
MR. FORD.

Well, what's the alternative policy?

MR. AXILROD. We ran [the model] a variety of ways. If you
run it holding money growth constant so there's no cycle, you tend to

2/2-3/81

-80-

get some cycles in interest rates. That's possible. But if you tend
to hold interest rates constant, you might get some movement in money
growth related to GNP. But we didn't succeed in getting cycles in
both, if my memory serves me.
MR. CORRIGAN. Let me ask the question differently. I only
saw the summary; I'm not sure what you drew the conclusion from. Is
that where you were going?
MR. AXILROD.

Which

[conclusion]?

MR. CORRIGAN. The conclusion that our own techniques didn't
in some sense create or contribute to the cycle of money.
MR. AXILROD.
[There was a] sharp drop in money in the second
quarter; the models would have projected a higher amount of money in
that quarter--much more money--even with the weakness in GNP. So we
interpreted the sharp drop in money, even at the interest rates that
developed, as reflecting a sharp drop in money demand at that point.
We weren't creating the money demand; that was the public's reaction
to what interest rates [were doing].
The San Francisco interpretation
puts much less stress on the sharp drop in money demand and would
stress instead that there was a temporary deviation in money supply in
some sense because everyone was paying off loans. And viewing loans
as a supply, the amount of money dropped. They wouldn't tend to
interpret it as money demand. But again, there was an exogenous
factor, that credit control program, unrelated to our operating
procedures.
The big variations were coming out of that. And that's
essentially the basis for saying that.
MR. CORRIGAN. Let me ask the question differently, then. In
any of that material, was there an effort made to estimate the lag
between, say, a change in the nonborrowed path and its ultimate impact
on money?
[Was there any analysis of] how long that process takes?
MR. AXILROD. I'm not sure. I did ask the question:
If we
held the nonborrowed path, however constructed, and put in more money,
however that comes about, which gets more borrowing, would we ever get
back to the path? I don't know whether you're asking that question.
MR. CORRIGAN.
to path.

No, it's a slightly different one.

MR. AXILROD. The answer to that is: No, we don't get back
We would have to lower the nonborrowed path.
MR. CORRIGAN.

That's the question I'm asking.

MR. PARTEE. The question has to do with the lags. The
question is: What is the lag structure from a change in monetary
policy to the effect on observed money supply?
I think that's what
Jerry is interested in.
MR. CORRIGAN.

Yes.

MR. AXILROD. Well, again, that has to be answered somewhat
indirectly. Working through the money market model, which has
explicit interest elasticities and demand for money and lags, if you
want to hit that total reserves badly enough in a one-month period,

2/2-3/81

-81-

and you're running a couple of hundred million ahead on total
reserves, meaning you're running ahead on money by whatever the
multiple is--10 or something like that--then you've got to lower the
nonborrowed reserves a heck of a lot more than $200 million if you
want to get on path that week. I've forgotten the exact numbers that
I got out of this; I got them a year ago October when we started this
and kept getting them lately. That month you've got to lower them,
say, $1 billion, because you get an offset in borrowing of $800
million or something like that, even under contemporaneous reserve
accounting. So you generate massive interest rate pressures. Now, we
don't have evidence that if you generate those massive interest rate
pressures, you're going to start cycling money. Our evidence is
pretty clear that you'll get interest rate cycles or interest rate up
and down movements, but not money cycles.
MR. CORRIGAN. That's where I get stuck. I don't see how you
can get the up and down interest rate movements without in turn
getting an up and down movement in money, because the interest rates
presumably are what cause the-MR. AXILROD. Well, that's a technical question. The lags
are, on average, six or seven or eight months at the longest and [most
of the effect is] done in about three or four months. You have to
start comparing the effects of this month's drop in interest rates
given that [sort of lag].
It takes most of its effect three or four
months from now.
MR. CORRIGAN.

I'll have to look at that paper.

MR. PARTEE. My [memory] is that it could be four, but maybe
a little more vigorously-MR. CORRIGAN. My instinct, though, is that the way we
operate could very well produce those results.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, one of the things that continues to
concern me a bit about this is this simple relationship, and maybe Mr.
Ford can enlighten us about it, that we're attempting to control the
economy through bank service charge practices. Corporations hold a
large percentage of the money supply; their required balances are
related to their activity in the prevailing interest rate

[environment] with an indeterminate lag of several months. We push up
interest rates; the banks all send out notices to the corporations
that they can keep lower balances next month. Interest rates go down,
so the money supply declines. And because interest rates have gone
down the banks send out notices to their customers that they now have
to keep higher balances.
MR. FORD. There is that perverse dynamics. Are you asking
whether, as the interest rate cycle evolves, bankers change the
balance requirements? Is that the question? Sure they do.
MR. PARTEE.

bank.

How fast do they do that?

MR. ROOS.

No faster than they have to.

MR. FORD.

Oh, heavens.

That varies so much from bank to

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The saving grace here is probably that the
bank practices vary in this respect enough so that it doesn't have any
cyclical movement to it.
MR. FORD. For a long time, the Fed did a survey of lending
[practices] and it supposedly covered that. When you read the results
of those surveys and talk to corporate lending officers and listen to
the policies dictated to them by their senior managements, there's a
vast [unintelligible].
You learn nothing from the survey. What you
have to do, actually, is an audit of collected balances--not just what
the bank says the corporate customer has to have but what it actually
is getting out of the corporate customer. I think it would show, as
Paul suggested, that when things get tight the bankers try to come
down on them harder. But as for how much they do, I've never seen any
good evidence for all the banks. I know how it works in two or three
banks that I'm familiar with, but not all of them.
MS. TEETERS. Steve, actually, we were trying to get back on
the path in two specific instances. One was the drop in April; and
then we were moving back up to the path over a three-month period.
The other one was the ratchet up in July--or August, I guess. We were
reacting mainly to two almost discrete occurrences. Did that in any
way affect the rate at which we tried to get back?
It's not as if we
continuously drifted off in one direction or the other. We just took
some tremendous ups and downs that we were trying to correct.
MR. AXILROD. Yes. Well, it affected our deviation, I think.
That is, we were so far off a couple of times that it made our average
deviation bigger than it otherwise would have been. I don't remember
exactly how the Committee targeted in those periods; I don't remember
whether the goal in that period was to get back fast-MS. TEETERS. As I remember it, you gave us the option of
getting back in three months or getting back in six months.
MR. AXILROD. That's right. And I just don't remember how it
came out. But the misses there certainly affected our average
absolute deviation. The year was very much affected by those two
occurrences. Another year may not be. We might end up looking a lot
better in another year because of that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Henry has raised a question of publishing
the directive, which was not on my agenda. But do you want to make
your case, Henry?
MR. WALLICH. Well, we're under challenge to prove that we're
sticking by our guns. It seems perfectly obvious to us that we are.
We announce our targets a year ahead; we meet only every five or six
weeks and we then publish a record so anybody who wants to inform
himself can see clearly that we haven't changed our targets.
Nevertheless, if you read the market reports--I try to read as many as
I can and the most troublesome that I know of is Eric Heineman's of
Morgan Stanley--they continually say that the Fed once more has given
up on inflation. Three months later he finally discovers that the Fed
seems to have decided that they will fight inflation after all. That
sewage flows into the-SPEAKER(?).

Remember, we can't go back to--

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MR. WALLICH.

How do we prove that we haven't changed our

mind?
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Do you think he'd write a different
newsletter if we did publish [the directive immediately]?
MR. WALLICH. I think somewhat different, yes. For one thing
he always uses existing material, including our policy record and the
discount rate proceedings in full detail. He reprints them to fill
about half of his letter. And he's not the only one who for need of
something to write says that the Fed doesn't know what it is doing, or
doesn't know what it wants and changes policy almost continuously. I
think we could do something to defuse that.
I recognize that the cost
of this is quite considerable. For one thing, we might get much more
of an immediate reaction from the Congress, for instance, to anything
that looks like a rise in interest rates. For another, it's only on
this technique--if we don't emphasize interest rates--that we can
publish immediately. Under the old technique, with [emphasis on] the
federal funds rate, we would have tipped off the market on what we
were going to do over a month and the market possibly would have taken
it to the next stage. That danger still exists with a [federal funds
rate] band if they see the band is not now 12 to 18 percent but 11 to
17 percent.
They might say the midpoint has moved and so the funds
rate is going to move and they might do that right away. So, I see a
considerable cost, but I still think it's worth considering, and I
lean toward doing it.
MS. TEETERS. Even on the funds rate, Henry, they found [what
our new rate was] by noon on Wednesday [after the meeting] anyway.
MR. WALLICH.

Some [did].

MR. PARTEE. Henry, the last time we published, we had a
directive that specified a funds rate range of 15 to 20 percent, I
think. And when we did that, I've forgotten just exactly where the
actual funds rate was but it was right close to 20 percent.
MR. STERNLIGHT.
MR. PARTEE.
effect

It was about 19-1/2 percent.

Now, what do you suppose would have been the

(a) on Eric Heineman and

(b) on the market if that afternoon we

had published in the Committee's directive a funds rate range that has
5 points of downward room in it but no upward room at all?
I think
you'd get the same story from Heineman in spades. And I think the
market would have assumed--I'd say it's like shooting fish in a
barrel--that the funds rate wouldn't go over 20 percent and it could
only go down. That would have had an effect on all the variables.
Whether it would have been good or bad, I don't know. But publication
of that particular directive would have had an effect.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I wish to reinforce that.
The market
participants whom I respect the most are saying that it's important to
maintain uncertainty in the minds of the market participants to the
maximum degree possible. They say that the Fed move to a 6-point band
created a healthy tone in that market.
I agree with Chuck that there
are times when we'd be publishing a fed funds range that would reduce
that uncertainty, and I think that would tend to produce unfortunate

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results in the markets.
In a certain sense it would focus more
attention also on the fed funds rate band if we published immediately.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Certainly, once we began doing that, we
couldn't stop. And if we ever wanted to put something in the
directive such as some qualified statements about if this happens
something else might happen later on--as we did last month, though not
on the federal funds band-MR. PARTEE. I just think there are times--I've seen them
periodically--when we want to put a constraint on [interest rate
movements].
And if we had to announce that constraint right away, I
think it would hurt.
MR. MORRIS. Also, when we have conference call meetings and
raise the rate, presumably we would have to announce that immediately,
too, which is-MR. ROOS. Well, just so that Governor Wallich isn't left to
drift alone, I agree fully with what he says. I think there is much
unnecessary volatility in the financial markets as a result of some
perceived signal from the Fed that it is going to do something that it
indeed isn't going to do. The more we tell them and the more we play
our cards openly, the better everybody will be able to adjust to what
we're trying to do. So, I would endorse what you said, which may have
eliminated the last vestige of success for it, Henry!
SPEAKER(?).

[Unintelligible]

MR. WALLICH.

Well, look at what other central banks do.

SPEAKER(?).

chance of success.

He said "Roosfully."

MR. WALLICH. We are very much on the defensive. We operate,
as it were, trying not to show our hand. The Bundesbank, which is a
very strong central bank, calls a press conference every time they've
done something worth talking about. They explain very clearly what
they are doing.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

[Unintelligible].

MR. WALLICH. Well, it has worked well for many, many years.
And I don't think it has to do with their present problem. They're
not afraid of their government and they're not afraid of their
legislature. And they do inform the market.
MR. PARTEE.
MR. WALLICH.

How could that be?
Well, I guess they are an independent central

bank.
MR. FORD. I don't really understand the notion that
uncertainty is desirable. I always thought when we were discussing
volatility in long-term rates before that we said uncertainty
compounds volatility; it is an economic cost. It has to be either
that uncertainty is bad or it's good. I think it's bad.

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VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Uncertainty in markets' behavior is
If you
absolutely a sine qua non. Take the foreign exchange markets.
don't have people betting on both sides, you're going to have
[in]stability in markets or movement in one direction. Now, if you're
It seems to me
going to have a government controlled market, fine.
that that is not what you're talking about.
MR. WALLICH. Well, there's a difference between uncertainty
and ignorance. You want to give the most information, but it will
still leave the distant future uncertain.
MR. PARTEE. Yes, but you do have to have two-way markets.
I think
Without differences of opinion, you will have no markets.
that's what Tony was referring to.
opinions.

MR. WALLICH. Yes, but these might both be well-informed
They could still end up being different.

MR. BLACK. Henry, if we had contemporaneous reserve
accounting and no limit on the federal funds rate, I'd be with you 100
percent.
MR. PARTEE. Yes, I think that makes a big difference.
tell with no constraint on federal funds rates--

To

[With no such constraint,] we really wouldn't be
MR. BLACK.
telling the market anything. They would know as much as we know; we
wouldn't know which way rates--short-term rates anyway--were going to
go on that basis.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I detect no upsurge toward a majority for
this opinion. The last question I have here is a similar one, which
we certainly don't have to resolve here.
It's not the responsibility
of the Committee, but I wonder where opinions stand on publishing the
money supply data. I got a letter from Senator Garn and Senator
Proxmire the other day raising the question of whether we shouldn't
stop publishing weekly figures.
MR. MAYO. We can't do it under the Freedom on Information
Act, can we? Period.
MR. MORRIS. We can if we switch to M2 and M3 because [we
don't have weekly data].
MR. PETERSEN. We can stop publishing the data; we could not
resist a specific Freedom of Information Act request for the data if
they are compiled and used. But there is no requirement to publish
them.
MR. SCHULTZ.

And in fact we'd get

[requests].

MR. MAYO. Well, that's dancing on the head of a pin.
it's there, it's there.
MR. PARTEE.

If

There would be a delay, though.

MR. FORD. Well, maybe for a time we don't have to compile
the data for the public.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. And presumably we could ask Congress to
change the law if they thought seriously about it.
MR. FORD. That's what you're asking?
Do we want the Act changed?
asking us?

Is that what they're

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. No, they didn't specifically ask that. I
forget whether they made any reference to it or not. They made some
reference to the fact that they understood there might be a question
under the Freedom of Information Act. I think that is the way they
worded it.
I don't think they volunteered to change [the Act], but
they didn't say they wouldn't.
MR. MAYO.

Send them back [a request]

to change the Act.

MR. MORRIS. That would be one of the advantages of switching
to the broader aggregates where we don't have weekly data.
MS. TEETERS.

But they'd still request them.

MR. MORRIS.

We don't have it.

SPEAKER(?).

It would cut down the reporting [burden].

MS. TEETERS.

But we can't stop collecting it.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It has occurred to me--though I'm not
ready to propose this yet--that we may have legitimate grounds for not
publishing seasonally adjusted figures because the seasonal adjustment
factor is so bad. We would tell the public that we don't trust it and
we're not going to-MR. GRAMLEY. We cannot create one internally without also
making it available under the Freedom of Information Act.
MR. PARTEE.

Let's do away with it since it's no good.

MR. GRAMLEY. Well, that's fine. But then we probably will
have to go to Frank's procedure of targeting on M2 because we won't
have anything that is a weekly number.
MR. PARTEE. How about successive estimates of the monthly
seasonally adjusted numbers?
MR. MAYO. That's the bureaucracy at work. Our alternative
then is to publish a new set of figures on our evaluation of noise.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I won't prolong this any further.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. In the staff material I think there
are some good comments on that.
They point out that if we publish the
raw data, without the seasonal adjustment, everybody is going to be
making their own seasonal adjustments. And then they're going to be
watching other things to get a clue as to what Fed policy is and will
pay more attention to the fed funds rate.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
Kichline.

There is no question about that.

Mr.

-87-

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MESSRS. KICHLINE, ZEISEL, and TRUMAN.
Appendix.]

[Statements--see

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Thank you for your happy comments. I
think we ought to discuss the outlook, probably for most of the rest
of the time we have [left today] anyway. In that process, you will
recall that you recently provided some [individual] forecasts, which
presumably will have to be summarized for the Humphrey-Hawkins
testimony. Not all the assumptions were the same on the monetary
side. I forget:
What have we done in previous years about getting
commonality in the assumptions if not the forecasts?
MR. KICHLINE. We did not [have uniform assumptions].
asking in terms of this exercise?

You're

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes. We didn't [specify] any assumptions
I don't think. Did we ask people when making their forecasts to use
the same assumption or not?
MR. KICHLINE. We specified the midpoint of the ranges. On
this one we asked that the forecast be accompanied by a statement as
to what the assumptions were. So, the assumptions did vary.
MR. SCHULTZ.

We have given [Congress] a Board forecast in

the past.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We gave them a forecast that [generally
encompassed] the views of the [individual] Committee members. But I
can't remember whether we asked everybody to make a forecast on the
basis of the same monetary and fiscal assumptions.
MR. PRELL. Last time was the first time that the entire FOMC
participated. We asked for forecasts on two bases:
in terms of
fiscal policy assumptions and with the basic money stock assumption we
ultimately

[adopted]--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
supply assumption?
MR. PRELL.
MR. SCHULTZ.
SPEAKER(?).

So everybody presumably had the same money

Presumably.
Not this year.
It was different this year.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, in these preliminary forecasts [the
assumptions] were different anyway. I just don't know what the right
procedure is here. It's logical for everybody to use the same
assumption. But if somebody violently disagrees with the assumption,
it seems a little artificial to force that person to use it.
MR. PRELL. Well, in terms of the basic thrust of the
Humphrey-Hawkins exercise, the assumption might relate somehow to what
we thought the Administration economists were going to do with fiscal
policy, which leads one to various indeterminate states at this time.
But there's nothing we can do that is going to be clean-cut in terms
of the overall purpose of the [exercise].

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MR. WALLICH. Well, it seems logical that one should make as
good a judgment as one can. And that really implies also as good a
judgment as one can of the policy outcome, not the policy intentions.
The forecast here in the Greenbook is severely constrained by what may
well be an unrealistic outlook. And we have a chance here to be as
realistic as we can.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
quite sure how--

Well, that's the dilemma, and I'm not

MR. PARTEE. Well, not for reporting under Humphrey-Hawkins.
You certainly don't want to be all that realistic, do you?
MR. WALLICH.
MR. PARTEE.

I try to be realistic.
Really?

MS. TEETERS. Conversely, the Greenbook may be [biased]
unrealistic assumptions on money.

by

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, all I would say at this point is
that we have a considerable amount of time before we have to publish
this, and we haven't even decided what we're deciding. Maybe we can
defer that question until after the meeting tomorrow and then ask if
anybody wants to redo their forecast; perhaps we can at least narrow
the range of assumptions from what we have.
MR. KICHLINE. I would note that the forecasts in the
Humphrey-Hawkins report would naturally be related to a range on the
monetary aggregates. So there is room within a range concept to
accommodate, I would think, a large number of the members of the
Committee.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I suppose that's a reasonable compromise:
To ask people to make assumptions that are at least within the range
of what the Committee is talking about.
SPEAKER(?).

Especially if you're going to be called--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We have a summary here of all your
forecasts, which could be distributed after the meeting for whatever
use it may be. But we will not consider this a final forecast until
we complete our work. Who wants to talk about the outlook? Mr.
Boehne.
MR. BOEHNE. I agree with the staff forecast in general. But
it does seem to me, as one goes about talking to people, that there
are some real disparities in peoples' outlooks and I think that has
some implications. For example, a majority of businessmen even in the
Third District, which has been an area of slow growth, are really much
[That includes those in] high
more optimistic than this forecast.
technology, energy development, business services and that kind of
thing. On the other hand, if you talk to businessmen who are doing
very, very, poorly--those in auto and auto-related industries, small
businessmen who have to finance inventories, and thrift institutions-[it is quite different].
While we have been used to regional
disparities, it seems to me that the disparities among business types
are much sharper and much stronger than in previous recessions. And I

2/2-3/81

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think the true picture of the economy is quite different. If we have
this outlook of slow speed ahead, on average, I think we are going to
have a minority of businesses that are really going to be pushed to
the wall, even though on average it looks as though we're just going
slow speed ahead.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think that is a relevant comment, that
we have a two-tier economy or something. Half of it you can't keep
down and the other half is in depression. I don't know what to do
It makes it more difficult [for us] for the very reasons
about it.
you suggest.
MR. RICE.

It's consistent with low, slow growth.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it may be consistent with low growth
overall, but the pressures, financial or otherwise, [are concentrated]
on the half that isn't doing anything--even now.
SPEAKER(?).

[Unintelligible]

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
speechless!
MR. SCHULTZ.

the stock market.

Who else wants to comment?

You're all

What were those permits figures, Jerry?

MR. ZEISEL.

They were down 24 percent.

MR. PARTEE.

Is that all?

Do you have that

number?

MR. KICHLINE. They were down 24 percent in January; this is
based on the first two weeks of data and it's a sample. There is a
good deal of disparity between single-family and multifamily. As you
may know, the multifamily starts have been exceptionally strong
recently but in January permits for multifamilies declined 39 percent
and for singles 14 percent. So it's quite weak.
MS. TEETERS.
MR. ZEISEL.
MR. KICHLINE.

Permits are at what--around 900,000?
940,000.
940,000 compares to 1.2 million in December.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Corrigan.

MR. CORRIGAN. Well, looking at this array of numbers here, I
see that I am very much on the high side in terms of [the forecasts].
MR. PARTEE.

The Minneapolis Bank is--

MR. CORRIGAN. The Northwest is getting to me, I guess! My
projection is on the high side and may be the highest in terms of real
GNP. I'd like to have a nice, scientific, neat explanation as to how
I arrived at that conclusion, but I don't. Basically, a lot of what I
have put into my own forecast does reflect quite strong growth in the
second half of the year, keyed to the assumption that there will be a
major spending cut that has a strong and positive psychological effect
coupled with the tax [cut] programs.

2/2-3/81

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MR. SCHULTZ.

We understood rational expectations in the--

MR. CORRIGAN. That's not rational; that's irrational, I
think. But that's the catalyst in terms of the forecast as I have put
it together here. Obviously, with the kind of forecast I have, the
weight of risk is on the down side. And we do have many of these
vulnerabilities in the financial system and not just in the thrifts in
my mind. I'm still not sure where we're going to be on oil prices.
What is your [estimate] of the average oil price for 1981, Ted?
MR. TRUMAN.
MR. CORRIGAN.

The average is $38.
That's the annual figure?

MR. TRUMAN. Right. Most of it we get, as I said, in the
first part of the year. So, we will be essentially at that point by
midyear.
MR. CORRIGAN. Anyway, we have all those risks that we've
talked about before. The other side of the coin is that, whether it's
housing or autos or just about anything you can think of, there's a
tremendous residual of underlying demand, if we can ever get the right
conditions in place where the right kind of demand can flourish rather
than be surpressed and frustrated as a lot of it is now. But in a
nutshell, basically the driving force behind why my numbers are on the
high side is my assumption about fiscal policy and the way that's
going to affect the psychology in the short run.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Morris.

MR. MORRIS. Our forecast for the year as a whole is not so
much different, but it's different in shape. That is, we're more
pessimistic for the first half. Sitting here a year ago, we had all
this financial restraint in place and we were wondering when we were
going to see some response. When we did get a response, we got a
pretty big one. I don't think it's going to be that big this year; I
think we're close to another peak in economic activity, with a shallow
recession coming in the first half. That's what I would look for.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Teeters.

MS. TEETERS. When I looked over the staff forecast, what
really struck me most was how sensitive it was to the inflation rate.
Given the monetary assumptions that we adopted in July, we already
have the velocity to a point that if there's any increase in inflation
over what the staff is forecasting, real growth could shoot down to
the point where it is negative all year long.
It seems to me that if
there is any risk in this forecast, it is that we'll get more
inflation and a comparable decrease in real growth. So, we could have
a year-long recession based on the types of assumptions we're making.
That would indicate to me that instead of trying to lower the monetary
target ranges, which we just barely got within [last] year, that we'd
be well advised to stay with the ones we had this past year and try to
come in at the center of them rather than to lower them progressively
and run what I think is an increasing risk of missing them on the top
side. My forecast--I'm obviously the bottom one among the governors-is that we're going to have less real growth and somewhat more
inflation. And [my view is] that we probably won't have higher

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interest rates either or we'll miss our monetary targets for the rest
of the year.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Balles.

MR. BALLES. Well, I guess differences of opinion make stock
markets, horse races, and forecasts.
I lean toward the side of being
a little more optimistic than the Board staff, showing a bit more real
GNP growth and a bit less inflation for the year. But [the
differences] are certainly within the normal range of judgmental
things that have to go into these forecasts. I was mainly interested
in asking Jim what he would consider the greatest point of
vulnerability in this forecast. Do you share my misgivings about any
forecast now in view of the ongoing uncertainties about the new
Administration's economic program and what it might do both on the
spending side and the tax side?
Is this forecast of yours, for
example, very sensitive to significant changes in the tax rates or
[government] spending levels?
I don't know myself how to do a solid
forecast in view of those uncertainties.
MR. KICHLINE. Well, we've done a number of simulations and
experimented with the impact of alternative fiscal policy assumptions,
assuming the same rate of growth of M1.
In general, [much hinges on]
whether you take an approach that incorporates the three stages of the
Kemp/Roth bill, which we have not assumed--we've only taken the first
one.
If you assume that expenditure control [presents] a bit more
difficultly to the Administration and they don't meet the targets that
we have assumed in the forecast, the result is somewhat more real
growth, but not a great deal more, in part because of this intractable
inflation problem. If you hold the same money growth path, interest
rates get kicked higher and some other expenditures get squeezed out.
Of all the experiments--and I think one can argue about the interest
rate pattern--we get somewhat more real growth, but what we're talking
about is a plus or minus 1 percent at an annual rate, so it's not a
big difference. I would say that one of the areas in this forecast
that is clearly very uncertain is the fiscal side; one can very much
argue about the expenditure cuts that we have in the forecast or about
what will happen to defense spending, the size of the tax cut, etc.
And it does matter. But given where the economy is and with the level
of interest rates that we have, our own analysis suggests that
potential demands in the private sector are very strong but are being
restrained. If you dump in a more expansive fiscal policy and you get
higher interest rates, that squeezes out some private funds. That
does not kick up the economy to significantly higher real rates of
growth.
MR. BALLES. The one thing that I find rather scary is the
possibility that the tax reduction will come well in advance of the
expenditure cuts, if the cuts come at all.
On that matter, the very
first chart in the final set of charts that you presented shows
federal borrowing relative to GNP. Could I just ask whether the
assumptions underlying the lower half of that chart assume tax cuts
and expenditure cuts or what? And does it include the off-budget
items?
MR. KICHLINE. That includes Treasury borrowing, which would
include financing the unified budget as well as the off-budget items.
It does not include federally sponsored borrowing; it's just the

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unified and off-budget items.
It's consistent with what we have built
into the forecast. In 1982 we would be running with a deficit of
about $80 billion on the unified budget; you'd have to add about $20
to $23 or $24 billion for off-budget items.
For Treasury borrowing
that's in the area of financing more than $100 billion in 1982.
But
that does imply significant expenditure restraint.
MR. SCHULTZ. I noticed that Dr. Burns in his testimony to
the Budget Committee added in several other things; he added in the
guaranteed borrowing of those agencies that are federally sponsored.
Could you have somebody give us a breakdown on that as to what goes
into those categories and what your estimates are?
I noticed his
estimate was around $141 billion.
MR. KICHLINE.
MR. SCHULTZ.

You're talking about right now?
No, no.

I didn't mean right now.

MR. KICHLINE. Well, the one difficulty in this area is that
there are obviously many ways to calculate federal borrowing
requirements and what the impact will be on markets. One can throw in
the federally sponsored agencies--for example the Home Loan Banks, the
Federal Land Banks, and Banks for Cooperatives. In our flow-of-funds
accounting here we view those as financial intermediaries. We can go
through this and give you alternative calculations. We can get the
size of the borrowing lower or much higher.
If you throw in the
financial intermediaries for the credit side of the budget, you get
very large numbers.
MR. MAYO. Especially if you put in the guarantees, which are
obviously in our private sector.
MR. KICHLINE.

Oh, yes.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Roos.

MR. ROOS. We basically came out with more optimistic results
practically all across the board. We are in the outlier category in
some instances, but I think our deviations were essentially based on
the 5-1/2 percent M-1B assumption used, rather than a lower monetary
growth assumption apparently used by the staff and most of our
colleagues. So, if we look more out of line than usual, it's because
of that, and after tomorrow's meeting we will try to adjust it
accordingly.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You did have a little higher, but not
terribly high, M-1B assumption compared to the staff. You have a low
price number. Does that mean that your [forecast] suggests that the
restraint that has already been exerted plus [restraint for] another
few months produces lower prices?
MR. ROOS. This is essentially the product of our model.
This is what it spewed out and I'm merely parroting to some extent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. In your model, prices ought to begin going
down some in terms of their rate of increase.

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2/2-3/81

MR. ROOS. Yes sir, even at a 5-1/2 percent M-1B growth rate
we would see that rate of reduction because that [rate of] growth
would be a significant reduction from the 6-1/2 to 7 percent growth
In fact--I guess we'll discuss this tomorrow--we
rate of this year.
think that a more abrupt reduction from the rate of aggregate growth
that occurred during 1980 could bring much more severe shocks to the
real economy. Even on that basis of 5-1/2 percent we are more
optimistic in terms of the price level reduction.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Who is next?

MR. WALLICH. Well, I made my projection on the expectation
of some overshoot of M1, whichever we choose, because while a shift in
the demand function is perhaps probable, it may not be so large and it
certainly is not assured. Even so, I think it will imply very
considerable restraint. We wouldn't overshoot unless interest rates
were pressing us very hard, so I arrive at a rather adverse conclusion
on the real GNP. On inflation, traditionally we have undershot our
probabilities. So, given that during the year some bad things surely
are going to happen--more food problems, more oil problems--and no
good things, one has to expect not a further rise in the CPI but
probably a rise in the deflator. On unemployment, although it's a
very unhappy projection to make, I think unless unemployment is high,
price increases aren't going to slow and wage increases aren't going
to slow. We have no magic way of getting from a low growth of the
money supply to lower wages and lower prices, except via low capacity
utilization and high unemployment; and, of course, that in turn is
achieved by high interest rates. These all are very unpleasant things
to contemplate and that's why I decided I'd put them down. I think I
am among some of the excluded outliers here.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You prefer to have a lower target and
overshoot or a higher target? What is the implication?
MR. WALLICH. I would rather have the lower target and at
least have a chance of making the right effort. But I would remind
the Committee that we probably will have base drift. I don't know
what we're going to base the range for 1981 on, presumably on the
If so, I have the impression that that
fourth quarter of 1980.
includes for all but M-1A base drift of about 2-1/2 percentage points.
Now, that's a very substantial step-up. Maybe I've done my numbers
wrong, but I think we have to add that to the level of the aggregates
as stated over the year in order to see what they really would be if
we had started a year ago--that is, at the end of 1979.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Gramley.

MR. GRAMLEY. I don't have any basic disagreement with the
staff projection. But if you look at what is likely to happen over
the course of the four quarters this year and to fiscal policy in the
latter half of the year, it seems to me that we face the real
possibility that aggregate demand in the latter half of the year will
be considerably stronger than the staff anticipates, at least in
nominal terms. And that will put considerably more pressure on prices
I say that because
and considerably more pressure on interest rates.
if you look at the staff projection of the high employment surplus or
deficit, it switches from a $19 billion surplus in the first and
second quarters to a $22 billion deficit in the third and a $14

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billion deficit in the fourth. In other words, virtually all of the
effect of that fiscal policy on the tax side goes in immediately but
the effect of the budget restraint is much delayed. Of course, what
will be happening at that point is that no one will really know
whether these intentions on the expenditure side are in fact being
realized if the tax cut goes through. So, I could be one of those
I think we're going to be
outliers at this table on the price side.
looking at a GNP deflator that has not shown any signs of deceleration
during the course of 1981 and a CPI which might well be accelerating
again as a consequence of the effects of both rising interest rates
and some pickup in economic activity. At some point during the course
of 1981, we're going to have to ask ourselves how long we can stick
with a policy posture that is simply not doing any good whatsoever in
bringing down the underlying rate of inflation because the fact of the
I'm
matter is that what we have done so far has done no good at all.
not saying we ought to quit, but I think we as a Committee are going
to be facing a very, very grim set of economic statistics with no real
hope that the underlying inflation rate is going to improve.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You say it has done no good at all. Are
you excluding the possibility that [our policy] prevented it from
getting higher?
It has
MR. GRAMLEY. No, I would certainly agree with that.
prevented the underlying inflation from accelerating. It would be
somewhat higher today--not much, but somewhat. It moves glacially,
not in large amounts. And if we like, we can take credit five years
from now for preventing the underlying inflation rate from having gone
up to 15 percent instead of 12-1/2 percent. But if the unemployment
rate at that point is 10 percent or more, I'm not sure how long we can
persist.
MS. TEETERS.

How do we know five years from now?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Are there any more optimistic comments?

Mr. Winn.
MR. WINN. The forecast falls out from our model and I think
How good are the assumptions? One of
the question we need to ask is:
them, as I understand it, is that you have assumed that there is no
real change in the international situation.
I'm not sure that's a
fair assumption, although I'm not predicting as Henry is that it's
going to fall apart on us.
But that's one assumption. Second, I
think we've overlooked a rather basic change, which Ed Boehne referred
to, and that is the change in psychology that has occurred in the last
I would mention
month, which may turn out to be false expectations.
the fact that advertising sales are really quite high. The television
chains report that they have sold out for the first quarter, which is
really a rather surprising development given the pessimism in certain
areas. That has been a pretty good leading indicator in the past; it
may not prove to be this time. But if you talk to business people
whom you would expect to be distressed and depressed, they're fairly
optimistic. Whether this is based on the psychology of a change in
government and what is going to come out of that, and if it doesn't
quite work out that way we will get disappointment in reaction, I
don't know. But the first half of the year could turn out to be a lot
stronger than any of us expects. Automobile sales could be stimulated
by the [higher] energy costs rather than depressed, for example. So,

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I think one could make a case for a somewhat stronger outcome than the
model.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You know, we have a certain bashfulness

today.
SPEAKER(?).
MR. SCHULTZ.

We're weary.
Humility has set in.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. When you give the Humphrey-Hawkins
testimony, do you have to say anything about what we expect the public
sector borrowing requirement or the unified budget deficit to be in
fiscal 1981-82? Do you explain that as one of your assumptions?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MS. TEETERS.

Oh, not very rigidly anyway.

But you're likely to be asked.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. The Reagan Administration so far is
talking about a $29 billion unified budget deficit for fiscal year
1982.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. But that's all based upon a much more
optimistic business outlook.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Exactly. They have 3-1/2 percent
growth in real GNP. I think you are going to get yourself into a very
strange situation there because one has to make some really heroic
assumptions to get [the deficit] down [to that level].
In fact, I
think real GNP growth at 4 to 4-1/2 percent is needed to get that and
one has to assume that inflation is down substantially.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't think the general problem
will be one of estimating the budget; it just falls out.
But we don't
have to make a forecast for 1982.
If we accepted the staff forecast,
we're certainly going to have a difference between our forecast and
the Administration's.
MR. PARTEE.

You don't think they'll project an $80 billion

deficit?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think they'll project whatever we
have for 1982 in the forecast we just heard.
MR. PARTEE.

It's $81 billion.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. No, I'm thinking of the GNP.
a comment on the outlook beyond that?

Do you have

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. No, our view is not that different.
I'd say it's a little on the gloomier side. But I would agree with
Lyle that we're unlikely to get any improvement in the rate of
inflation unless we see some unexpected developments in fiscal policy,
to a degree that I don't think is realistic.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
No tax cut?

By unexpected developments you mean what?

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2/2-3/81

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. No, I'm not talking about the
I'm sure we'll
receipts side; I'm talking about the spending side.
have a tax cut. But I can't conceive that even by fiscal 1982 we will
have the kind of spending cuts that will change expectations and
interest rates [unintelligible] of the nominal GNP that our monetary
So, I don't see anything but a long slide
policy [unintelligible].
ahead. On the other hand, it may very well be that after another year
or so of this, the Administration will accomplish a little
I think the fallout of all this, in terms of a
[unintelligible].
recommendation for the targets, is that the amount of flak we would
get if we didn't go ahead with a 1/2 point reduction [in the M1
ranges] would be enormous; and we live in a [unintelligible] type
world. None of us knows exactly what the results of this would be, so
I don't think we have any real alternative, even though I think Lyle
is right that we're not going to be able to show, at least in the next
twelve months or so, any reduction in the rate of inflation.
MR. SCHULTZ. Well, the critical thing here is that it is
absolutely clear that monetary policy [alone] just can't do this job.
If we don't hold on to the monetary aggregates, inflation gets worse;
if we do hold on to them, all we do is put all the pressure on certain
sectors of the economy. And [the result is] a very difficult economic
situation unless the government gets out of the way and lets credit
demands come down some. These people who are going around saying that
monetary policy can do the entire job of getting inflation down are
just terribly destructive. I don't know how in the world we can get
that point over; monetary policy [alone] just won't do it.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I know, but you saw the House Banking
Committee study. It said that the Federal Reserve was entirely to
blame for inflation and that the Treasury deficit had no impact.
MR. SCHULTZ.

I don't understand that.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Who else? Does anybody else want to
comment on the outlook and the dilemmas for monetary policy?
Mr.
Ford.
MR. FORD. I'll make a very brief comment. We're more
optimistic than your staff because we are more optimistic about the
results of your preaching. By the end of the year we're not outliers
on any of these measures that have been tabulated here. But we are on
the lower end [of the range of forecasts] for both unemployment and
inflation because we think there is a chance with the new
Administration coming in that we will avert a recession during the
first half of the year, contrary to the staff forecast. That assumes
that the Fed does its job on the monetary aggregates and further that
eventually there is a change in spending and tax policy on stream that
will have some favorable effects on the economy in real terms. And we
think that by the end of the year the economy won't be booming but
will be going along reasonably well, below the long-term growth path
but in a positive vein generating growth of about 3 percent on average
in the last two quarters with a reasonable unemployment rate and a
lower level of inflation than we have right now. That [assumes] that
we do what we say we're going to do on the aggregates and that people
take seriously the need to reduce spending to keep the deficit under
control. And we are assuming that they will.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Mayo.

MR. MAYO. Coming from what with due humility we consider to
be the lousiest performing District--economically speaking we have a
recession--what surprises me is that we don't have more difference
with the staff forecast for the national economy. Actually we are
right in the center of the range here, which I guess I can attribute
to our native optimism that somehow some of this is going to work out
all right or, to put it the worst way, that our bad performance this
year in the Chicago District will somehow be offset by Jerry's great
efforts in the great Northwest, Bill's down in the Southeast, and
John's in California. We are just going to have to muddle through on
this.
I think it's too early to come to Lyle's conclusion that we
haven't really accomplished anything. We have set in place a lot of
things and, although I'm usually the one who is more despairing of
what the Reagan Administration is going to be able to do in the next
year, I find that some of the comments here today are just too
If his initial effort looks too small, I think
pessimistic for me.
the President is going to have to get into entitlements and he'll
figure that he has three years to reelection and will swallow some
sort of change in the indexing provisions now. It's the only way out.
Unfortunately, our very vigorous new Budget Director got off on the
wrong foot by starting off with proposed big cuts in foreign aid and,
bang, he ran right against the new Secretary of State. I submit that
he picked the wrong horse to start his campaign. I think it would
have been better if he had started on the domestic side, even though
there is always a tendency for a Budget Director to start on foreign
aid because it has no voting constituency. Anyway, I think he can get
I
some spending down; I hope by as much as the staff forecast shows.
would say that is fairly optimistic on spending cuts.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Heartfelt comments from an old Budget

Director!
is the

MR. PARTEE. A safe thing to work on, Bob, [in]
[debt] servicing [cost].
That could be cut.
MR. MAYO.
MR. PARTEE.

the deficit

You mean interest rates.
Yes.

MR. MAYO. Sure, it's only $100 billion!
or 17 percent of the [total budget].
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

It's up to what--16

John Balles.

MR. BALLES. Well, I'll just provide a quick little
interesting piece of perspective here. My staff checked some recently
published forecasts by a number of major nationally known outfits such
as Wharton, Evans, Michigan, UCLA, Townsend-Greenspan, DRI, and Chase.
I was surprised to find out--maybe you guys already knew it--that our
Greenbook forecast is at the pessimistic end of the scale. That is
not to say that it's wrong, but it does show the lowest real GNP and
the highest inflation.
MR. KICHLINE. We have taken a look at that. We don't have
I do have the numbers
calculated medians for all of those services.
for four of them. Let me just pick DRI, which I think exemplifies the

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problem. It's especially true for 1982. DRI has 13.7 percent nominal
GNP growth for 1982. They have real GNP of nearly 4 percent--it's 3.9
percent--and the staff has a little under 1 percent. They believe
that to be consistent with bill rates that are lower in 1982 than they
are today. I think 13-3/4 percent nominal GNP growth doesn't very
easily go with 3-3/4 percent money growth and declining bill rates.
So, I think the nub of the problem in many of these outside forecasts
is that at least implicitly, if not explicitly, different monetary
assumptions lie behind them.
MR. SCHULTZ.
I would just note that I happen to get Burt
Cox's forecast for Merrill Lynch economics. I am very much afraid
that the Secretary of the Treasury may be looking at that one because
it's much more optimistic than yours. And I think therein lies part
of the problem.
MR. KICHLINE. Well, I have that one. That's a very
interesting one because it has a 1982 forecast of 13 percent for
nominal GNP growth and the interest rates in that Merrill Lynch
forecast go down from 14 percent in the current quarter to 6-1/2
percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. KICHLINE.

To 6-1/2 percent?

Yes, to 6-1/2 percent in the fourth quarter of

1982.
MR. PARTEE.

What is that nominal GNP?

MR. KICHLINE. Nominal GNP is 13 percent, real GNP I believe
is 6.1 percent, and the GNP deflator is 6-1/2 percent.
MR. WALLICH.

I believe they raised the interest rate level

lately.
MR. KICHLINE. Well, this was done this week.
what their forecast is.
around:

I don't know

MR. SCHULTZ. That's the problem with this stuff floating
It doesn't bear much relation to reality.

If not,
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Does anybody else have a comment?
we are not going to get very far into these long-range targets
tonight.
It's clear that we have a difficult decision, as always, but
a philosophic choice tonight, if I interpret the comments I have heard
correctly. We are looking at a gloomy business forecast; one view is
that it's constrained by money so we could unconstrain the forecast by
increasing money. The other view is that we should go ahead with
monetary restraint on the basis that the forecast is really going to
turn out better or that we need it anyway in terms of the ultimate
need to eliminate inflation. It's a little hard for me to see that we
can adopt the "give up" alternative, if I may term it that, at
precisely this stage in our economic evolution. I try not to be
overly optimistic, and I don't know if I'm being overly optimistic,
but I personally think that the Administration is probably going to
try harder on the spending side than most of the comments around this
table suggest. What actually is going to be accomplished, I don't
know. I don't have any number and I don't have any precise

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information of this sort. The kind of number that the staff put in
for 1982 must be on the order, anyway, of what they are thinking. And
they are aiming for considerably more than that I am sure by 1983.
I
also sense that they are going to try to get a vote on a big spending
package before they do anything on taxes or do it in the same vote in
some maneuver. Whether that can be done, who knows? But there is a
certain amount of sentiment in the Congress to do something. And if
this can be maneuvered in a way so that everybody doesn't have to vote
one by one on each particular program--if they find some way of
packaging it so that when it comes to a vote in the Congress as a
whole everybody can vote in favor of expenditure restraint and not
against a particular program--there may be some possibility [of
passage].
Whether that can be done or not, I don't know. I also
suspect that, if anything, the tax reduction will come later than the
staff has assumed. I don't think it's going to come any sooner. But
that all remains to be seen.
When I look at our targeting exercise for the next year and
realize that I have to explain it, I will tell you that I am in
I
trouble for more reasons than the difficulty of making up a target.
can barely understand what we are doing in terms of the adjustments
that have to be made to last year's [M1] figure in one way or another!
I thought it might be useful in the little time we have left [this
evening] to go over the problems as I perceive them so that hopefully
we can talk on more or less consistent grounds tomorrow. That may be
more than I can hope for because I keep getting confused by this every
time I go through it myself. Let's look at something like the
numbers--and I'm just basically worried about the M1 numbers--on page
6 [of the Bluebook].
I am sure that Mr. Axilrod will be listening
carefully to me and will tell me that I am confused by the time I get
finished. For either of the M1 numbers the Bluebook shows the target
ranges for '80 and the tentative target ranges for '81 that we had
adopted in July before we knew they were off course or internally
inconsistent. There are some alternative target ranges for '81, which
presumably are on the same basis as those tentative target ranges.
Then it shows as a memo the actual growth in '80, which I don't think
conforms to any of those targets. As a taking off point, so to speak,
it seems to me that we have to think about this in one of two ways.
And I just boggle at both as I think about explaining this when I go
before the [Congressional] committees. One is that we could think of
adjusted ranges for '80 that we presume economically are the same as
those targets that are listed here. These are the shadow cones, so to
speak, that we had. In that case, we would be taking off--it's the
same target presumably, and the same economic substance--[from a
point] consistent with the actual results. That is something like
2-1/2 to 5 percent for M-1A and 4-1/2 to 7 percent for M-1B. Is that
roughly right, Mr. Axilrod?
MR. AXILROD. That's right.
Yes, [it's an adjustment of]
about 1-1/4 points for M-1A and .5 or .6 for M-1B.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If you think of that assumption in your
head and you know what change in the target is appropriate--whether
you want a reduction or unchanged or whatever--you make the assumption
that the relationship between M-1A and M-1B was the same as last year.
That's just a base point for starting. It is not going to be the
same. But just to keep straight in your mind what you are talking
about, I think you would have those targets in mind that I just gave

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orally and then you would talk about a target that was unchanged or
[up or down] 1/2 or 1 point or whatever you thought [appropriate] from
there, on the assumption that the relationship between M-1A and M-1B
was the same as it was last year.
Alternatively, if you wanted to talk in terms of targets like
we had last year, then I think you ought to mentally adjust that memo
of the actual growth figure and add to M-1A this unexpected transfer
out of M-1A. You get something like 6-1/4 percent, which is what it
says in the footnote. For M-1B you have something like 6-3/4 percent.
Those numbers are then consistent more or less with the targets on the
left hand side of the page. Now, in fact, what we are going to have
this year, of course, is something quite different from any of these.
It's not only going to be different but, because of what went on in
January, it is quite clear that in a sense it is going to have a big
dogleg in it. We had a big decline in M-1A in January and that
probably is proceeding to some extent in February and then will return
to some normal [pattern], while M-1B is going to have a dogleg to the
right.
I'm just looking at the charts on [subsequent pages], where
M-1B is going to be exaggerated in January and February and then
resume, presumably, some kind of normal growth. Those doglegs bother
me a little because if we just show a cone without the dogleg, it
immediately shows figures that are way off the cone and just adds
another element of confusion. I would suggest--I don't know whether
we can conform to it or not--that we have to make clear what we are
talking about in terms of citing whatever targets we think are
appropriate. I'd suggest in the first instance that we forget about
the impact of NOW accounts and the institutional change this year just
so that hopefully we can keep the communications among ourselves
straight.
I played with the idea in my mind that that should be the
target we give them, saying that we are not going to give them a
target adjusted for NOW accounts until the January-February business
straightens itself out, after which we will give them [an adjusted]
one, beginning maybe from February just so we avoid this dogleg
problem. But, really, one idea is as bad as another. I don't think
there is a good way of doing this.
In any event, we will have to tell
them that the cone or channel or whatever we have that tracks the
actual figures as reported over the course of the year will be subject
to change as the year progresses--maybe every three months or so--as
we evaluate what the actual NOW account impact is.
MR. ROOS.
Is it feasible to ask the staff to take this table
on page 6 and run off a little supplementary table we can use based on
whatever we are going to talk about tomorrow?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Maybe you could put it down both ways, if
that's possible, Steve. Just put down the targets the way you have
them but with the figure you cite [in the Bluebook] as the adjusted
figure for last year. Then do it the other way with the ranges for
last year adjusted retrospectively, with the actual results last year.
I was going to suggest that there is a third way to do it, but the
third way is very similar to the adjusted actual figure, I guess.
Steve's adjusted actual figure still assumes that there is some modest
trend shift between M-1A and M-1B that is going to persist forever
more or less; but it's a very vague estimate, which is part of the
difficulty. I think it might be helpful to put those figures down
those two ways.

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Either way we adjust this, the
I'll make one more comment:
M1 figures come out very close to the top of the range. And we could
think of taking off from the top of the range instead of from the
actual number, if you wanted to. There's not much difference; in a
sense one could call it base drift or not; it's not a drift outside
the cone that we had. We can't quite do that with M2, I don't think,
because M2, which doesn't have all these other problems, ended up 3/4
of a percentage point above the cone. Presumably we have to call that
base drift, I suppose, or whatever you want. But we can't blur it
because they are not virtually the same numbers.
MR. WALLICH.

Isn't base drift from the midpoint and not from

the edge?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I think that's purely semantic. If
you think of it from the midpoint, we have base drift under any
definition. If we don't admit that it's base drift because growth was
It depends; different people have
within the cone, we don't have it.
different views of these cones. Some people say the midpoint is the
right target and any deviation is [measured from] the midpoint. Other
people say that [the cone itself provides] the elasticity one allows
oneself to adjust through the year and we shouldn't consider ourselves
off course if we're within the cone. I don't think one way is right
and one wrong. It all depends upon how one looks at it.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I think monetary policy is going to
be restrictive as hell. Without making the problem any worse for
yourself, even though I realize you are only talking about a quarter
point in the case of the two aggregates-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I'm not really suggesting it for M2;
there's virtually no difference because they are so close to-MR. PARTEE.

You get this problem--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We just make a different estimate of the
target when we make it identical.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. You're creating a precedent, and it
involves accepting the base drift. What I'm afraid of is that the
If we are going to
projections on interest rate levels may be right.
be talking about interest rates levels as high as are projected here,
or current levels, and then we make [our range] somewhat tighter, we
may find that we can't stay the course any longer.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I'm not necessarily arguing for one
or the other. I suggest this as a possible method of presentation, if
we want to take it.
It does create a precedent; some people may think
the precedent is good and some people may think it's bad. I think
If we could have a
we'd better quit for the evening at any rate.
different piece of paper, it might facilitate [our discussion].
MR. AXILROD.

Just make that table for M-1A and M-1B?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. AXILROD.

Yes, I think that's all.

It's very simple.

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2/2-3/81

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

[We will resume at]
[Meeting recessed]

9:30 tomorrow morning.

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Session held on February 3, 1981
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We can come to order and turn to the longrange targets. Mr. Axilrod has prepared a little table in accordance
with the instructions yesterday, which I hope is as "crystal clear"
It is a difficult thing to keep in mind. It's
[as] he described it.
conceptually simple but somehow-MR. AXILROD. It's the table, which should be in front of
Probably the
you, entitled "Long-run Targets on Alternative Bases."
best thing to do is for me to go through it stage by stage. The panel
on the left-hand side says "Abstracting from shifts to ATS/NOW
accounts."
That gives the target ranges for 1980 for M-1A and M-1B
that the Committee adopted in February of last year and reaffirmed in
July. There is a 1/2 point differential [between the ranges for M-1A
The best way to conceive of it is that it reflects some
and M-1B].
higher trend growth in M-1B relative to M-1A and some small residual
amount of shifting [to ATS/NOW accounts] we expected to occur at that
time in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania; we were unable to
[isolate the separate effects of those two developments].
That's how
that 1/2 point differential gets in there. The second panel says
That means the
"Reflecting shifts to ATS/NOW accounts in 1980."
shifts that occurred beyond whatever little residual we thought was
left--[beyond] that 1/2 point. As you can see, we divided those
shifts up, assuming two-thirds came from demand deposits and one-third
came from savings and other time accounts. That would have lowered
the M-1A target to 2-1/4 to 4-3/4 percent and would have raised the M1B target to 4-1/2 to 7 percent if the Committee had known in advance
what those shifts would be and had stated its target that way.
Now, it is those ranges to which it is more proper to compare
the actual growth in M-1A and M-1B for the year. As you can see, that
was 5 percent and 7-1/4 percent, [respectively], roughly 1/4 point
above the tops of those ranges.
Shifting back to the first panel, the
adjusted numbers, one can look at that in another way. One could say:
If I want to compare the behavior of M-1A and M-1B to their ranges, I
can either adjust the ranges or I can adjust M-1A and M-1B. In the
first panel you can see that if you take the actual growth in M-1A of
5 percent and add 1-1/4 points to it to represent the demand deposits
that were shifted out into ATS and NOW accounts, you get 6-1/4
percent; and if you take the actual growth of M-1B of 7-1/4 percent
and subtract from it the 1/2 percentage point that represents the NOW
accounts and ATS accounts that came in from savings deposits, you get
an M-1B growth of 6-3/4 percent.
In both cases, you can see that
growth is 1/4 point above the top of the range. You can view the
ranges and the growth rates in two different ways; [either way growth
is] 1/4 point above.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If I may just inject here, all of this is
based upon the assumption that Steve mentioned of a two-thirds/onethird shift. Unfortunately, I think that's a rather weak assumption.
We don't have much direct evidence during this period. That is
inherent moving forward from this point as well as looking backwards,
and it's a ballpark figure. That's all one can say about it.
MR. MAYO. But the two-thirds, Paul, is implicit both in the
range and in the growth figures, is it not?

2/2-3/81

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The same assumption is used for both. You
can see that either way you look at it, growth in 1980 came out 1/4
percentage point above [the ranges].
It's just a different way of
looking at the 1/4 point.
MR. AXILROD. If we used one-half and one-half [instead of
two-thirds and one-third], both the ranges and growth rates would be
adjusted by those relevant amounts.
MR. PARTEE. Steve, the actual growth figures were 5 and
7-1/4 percent last year. Those are the only ones the public has
available?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

That is correct.

MR. AXILROD. That's right.
I'm not sure if the Chairman
didn't say in some testimony recently-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, the published figures are the 5 and
7-1/4 percent. In testimony we gave the public those ranges shown in
the right-hand column--that top part. We've never given them the
adjusted figure, although it's a mirror image, I think.
MR. AXILROD. Now, focusing for a second on the left-hand
panel, line 1 there says "Target ranges for 1981 with a 1/2 point
reduction."
That simply is going down 1/2 point from the target
ranges for 1980.
Carrying on the 1/2 point differential by this time
reflects whatever we felt was going on in 1980 and continues in 1981.
Line 2 is a 1 point reduction, simply going down 1 point. Then the
next line says "Expected adjustment to target ranges to reflect actual
shifts to NOW accounts in 1981."
Of course, that reflects our
expectation of the actual shifts at this moment. Our estimate is that
M-1A would go down 7-1/2 percentage points more to reflect the demand
deposits going into NOW accounts and that M-1B would go up 2-1/2
points more to reflect the savings deposits or other assets going into
NOW accounts. That's on the present thought that there will be a
sharp slowing in growth of these accounts beginning pretty much
immediately and that the shift instead of being four-fifths from
demand deposits and one-fifth from savings works its way down to twothirds and one-third. That averages out to about three-fourths, given
the extent of the shift that occurred earlier in the year, though that
could, of course, vary. In any event, with that assumption, to get
the adjusted ranges to reflect the actual shifts to ATS and NOW
accounts, you have to take that 7-1/2 points off of the M-1A range,
which gives you minus 4-1/2 percent to minus 2 percent. And you have
to add the 2-1/2 points to the M-1B range, which gives you 6 to 8-1/2
percent.
Shifting over to the second panel and focusing on that
"Expected adjusted line," the reason the minus 7-1/2 percent becomes
minus 6-1/4 percent and the plus 2-1/2 percent becomes plus 2 percent
is that we are carrying forward in the second panel the actual extent
of shift that occurred in 1980.
That is, if the Committee specified
its target for M-lA as down 1/2 point from the adjusted range to 1-3/4
to 4-1/4 percent and its target for M-1B as down 1/2 point from the
adjusted range to 4 to 6-1/2 percent, then it is carrying forward in
those ranges the shifts that occurred in 1980--not the 1/2 point
differential between M-1A and M-1B but what turned out ultimately to

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be a 2-1/4 point differential. That is being carried forward as if it
were going to occur in 1981. Therefore, the expected adjustment you
have to make is less.
In the case of M-1A it's less than 7-1/2
percent; it's 6-1/4 percent.
In the case of M-1B it's 2 percent. Of
course, if you add those in, as you can see in the bottom lines, you
get exactly the same numbers in the right-hand panel and the left-hand
panel.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

It's all crystal clear!

MR. AXILROD.

I'm sure the public will very easily grasp

MR. SCHULTZ.

I think it is clear.

this!

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, you may now understand why I have
I have great confidence in my
doubts that anybody can explain this.
ability to explain, but...!
MR. MAYO. But the $64 question, Paul, is:
to state our ranges and what will be published?

How are we going

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's right. That's the question I want
to raise here now. I suggested tentatively yesterday that we may not
want to indicate the bottom line here.
I don't know whether it's a
good idea; maybe we should. Of course the bottom line is the same,
If we do state the bottom line, it's
whichever way we [describe it].
going to have to be stated in an exceedingly tentative fashion; we
will have to say that we are prepared to change this every quarter or
whatever, depending simply on an analysis of what is going on. One of
the difficulties we have is just that the shifts are so big. We have
a reasonable appraisal of where this money is coming from at the
moment in January. But the actual growth rates are very sensitive to
the assumptions one makes. We do think it's in the ballpark of 75 to
80 percent or a little more [from demand deposits].
We will have a
little finer judgment when we get some more thrift institution survey
data. But when we are not having big shifts, it is exceedingly hard
to tell what fraction is coming from where because it doesn't distort
the other figures enough to permit a fine judgment. The inherent
problem is that when things are shifting, one can measure it. When
things are in a more steady state and people are building up NOW
account balances, let's say, they are not actually shifting from
demand deposits; they are just holding a NOW account. The NOW account
goes up and we don't know whether it's going up because people are
holding more transactions balances of the traditional type or whether
it is because there is very little difference--or none in the case of
commercial banks--in the interest rate, and thus money they might
otherwise have put in a savings account ends up in a NOW account.
It's just very difficult to judge; it's a bit of a shot in the dark as
to what the adjustments last year imply about what that proportion is.
There's just no way to cross-check it, really, I don't think.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. There's also a problem that when it's
a big adjustment, even the skeptics recognize that these screwy
numbers are a result of the adjustment. But when it is a very minor
adjustment, then the skeptics are going to say we are trying to fudge
the figures on the growth [of the aggregates].

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's right. We have the question of
whether we want to give people those figures on the bottom. In one
sense, this is a substantive problem but not a presentational problem.
They are the same both ways, although there is a psychological problem
in that they look distorted. The other question in trying to explain
how the devil we got there or not even giving those bottom numbers at
all is:
Should we think in terms of giving them the kind of ranges on
It depends
the left-hand side or the right-hand side of this table?
upon where your starting point is.
What little foundation has been
laid is that the public has no actual figures other than 5 percent and
7-1/4 percent. They have been exposed a little to the idea that those
targets last year were mutually inconsistent and should have been
revised, as shown on the top row [of this table].
Just proceeding on
that basis, I think the presentational problem we have is that the
actual 1/2 percentage point reduction in the M-1B range happens to be
the same as the range that they are familiar with for last year. When
you look at it at first blush--and maybe it's fifth blush--it looks as
if we haven't changed the range, although we are insisting that we
have lowered it.
Economically, we have lowered it; but we may have a
helluva time convincing people that we have lowered it when we cite
the figures. On the other hand, if we use the other figure, then we
have to say that this is a range that is consistent with an actual
figure that we never gave you. It is [consistent with] an adjusted
actual figure, which we are now going to give you--the growth in M-1B
last year was not 7-1/4 percent but 6-3/4 percent--and we will have to
go through all that rigmarole. More importantly perhaps at this
stage, I don't think it makes any difference which way we look at it
and present it in the end, so long as we are straight in our
conversations today when somebody is citing a range whether they are
working from the right-hand or the left-hand side of this table.
MS. TEETERS. I think we would be better off using the righthand side. Those numbers, the 5 percent and 7-1/4 percent, are in
existence and in the public domain.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
side of the table.

That's the great advantage of using that

MS. TEETERS. It seems to me that we would be better off
trying to explain the change in the range than we would trying to
adjust the existing numbers.
MR. GRAMLEY. I wonder if it wouldn't be helpful also, to
reduce the confusion as much as possible, to focus exclusively on M-1B
as the number for narrow money and to think about dropping M-1A
altogether.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Eventually I think we want to do that.
I
would assume that we would do it next year if we don't do it this
year.
In my mind, the problem with doing it this year is that because
we are getting switches that expand M-1B artificially in a sense, it
helps in terms of perspective if we also give the M-1A range, which
shows a decline. If [critics] keep saying we haven't reduced the
range, we tell them to look at the whole [picture, showing both M-1B
and M-1A] and it's obvious that we have. That's the one advantage of
keeping both of them.

2/2-3/81

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MR. MAYO. Well, Paul, one of the interesting mathematical
outcomes of Steve's table is that the average of M-1A and M-1B is the
same; whether one takes the target ranges adjusted or unadjusted, it
comes out to 4 to 4-1/8 percent. Now, whether that helps you any or
just confuses the issue-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Which one are you looking at?

MR. MAYO. I'm looking at the right-hand figures exclusively.
I'm looking at the 1/2 point reduction, which says 1-3/4 to 4-1/4
percent for M-1A and 4 to 6-1/2 percent for M-1B.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

But they're not the same.

MR. MAYO. If you take the midpoint of those two ranges, it's
4 percent.
If you do the same thing with the adjusted figures on the
next to the last line in the table, the arithmetic mean is 4-1/8
percent.
I don't know whether we can use that to advantage in
explaining that basically this is merely a switch within the M1
concept, [regardless of] what is M-1A and M-1B; I think it's rather
interesting that it comes out to that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It comes out close, as I guess you said,
not quite the same. It would come out the same if the shift were
50/50.
MR. MAYO.

That's right.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We cannot say that the shift was not 50/50
last year, because we just don't know. If it was 50/50, it just
lowered the one range by as much as it raised the other.
MR. MAYO. While it sounds like a statistical gimmick to
explain it that way, it does indicate the basic transference between
the two to explain the adjusted versus the unadjusted ranges.
MR. CORRIGAN. Steve, in terms of the estimate, 50/50 sounds
as though it might in fact be closer to what is happening.
MR. AXILROD.
what is happening.

Well, we don't have any evidence that that's

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Are you talking about what happened last
year or now? There is pretty strong evidence that right now the shift
is at least three-fourths.
But our assumption is that that's very
much a transitional thing during the first stages of this.
MR. CORRIGAN. Well, that's one of the things I wanted to ask
about.
I don't know to what extent it's representative, but at least
in the Ninth District virtually all of it is coming from ATS accounts.
MR. AXILROD. These are net shifts, so [a shift from an ATS
to a NOW account] doesn't affect this. Both ATS and NOW accounts are
in other checkable deposits, so that doesn't lead to an increase in
other checkable deposits.
MR. CORRIGAN. My question is: What happens to the original
savings account, the second leg of the existing ATS account? At the

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precise moment in time that the switch is effected, the balance has to
be in the demand deposit part of the ATS account, but that's only at
that precise moment.
The day before or the hour before it was in a
savings deposit.
MR. PARTEE.

Which is counted as other checking.

MR. CORRIGAN.

Well, that's what I'm wondering.

MR. AXILROD. Yes, sure.
If it was an ATS account and we got
the data from a bank that was reporting accurately, we added [it to]
other checkable deposits.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes, the shift from an ATS account
shouldn't affect this, if everything is being reported correctly.
MR. CORRIGAN. Okay, I guess that's my question.
as comfortable as you can be [about that]?

And you are

MR. AXILROD. It's clear, I suppose, once there are a lot of
NOW accounts, that to whatever extent people made use of a savings
account before they are going to put their savings in a NOW account
for a while instead. So, eventually, we assume that this will be a
much more complicated animal to evaluate; it's going to move not just
as a transaction account but as something that's a mix between a
transaction and a savings account.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's the real trouble, I think. Once
the NOW account has been created, it will inherently have some
characteristics of a savings account and not the old style transaction
account.
MR. CORRIGAN.
MS. TEETERS.

Well, the average balance says that.
Will we ever know for sure what the shifts

were?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MS. TEETERS.

No.

Nothing is for sure.

Well, we won't have any information on this.

MR. AXILROD. We asked the banks early in January and we had
asked them at one point last year--I forget exactly when. The results
last year were not inconsistent with the two-thirds/one-third
proportions that we had derived from past experience. But it couldn't
be proved one way or the other.
from.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We can ask a bank where the shift comes
We may not get an accurate answer, but at least we can ask it.
MR. FORD.

They don't know.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. In some cases they think they know, but
the answers are pretty much all over the lot.
It is at least a
concrete question to ask them. Once the shift has taken place and we
ask them why their NOW accounts have gone up, they don't know what the
motivation of the customer is.

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MR. FORD. Even those banks that try to monitor it only have
I
partial information about where the money going in [came from].
would say you are very right to be concerned about our vulnerability
for surprises on the M-1B range adjusted, whichever one we choose. We
have done in depth what you are suggesting with some S&Ls and some
banks. We asked them what they expect. The very limited feedback I
get is essentially that the S&Ls are just delighted by how all their
projections are being overrun; they are not sure how much of it is
coming out of [banks].
On their own internal accounts they can track
some of the switches from one account to another, but on the net
inflow of funds to NOWs they don't know exactly.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We had people from the National Savings
and Loan Association in here the other day and they had done some kind
of a survey. This is the smallest part; most of the shifting is in
the commercial banks. But for what it is worth, they said their
survey showed 60 percent was coming out of their own accounts, which
meant basically savings accounts; 40 percent was coming from
elsewhere.
They couldn't identify where "elsewhere" was, but they
assumed it was mostly from commercial bank checking accounts. But
that's one survey of the S&Ls. Now, the banks have given us the
surveys that you people made and had tabulated, weighted probably
incorrectly. That showed more than 80 percent of it, in this first
blush, coming out of their own checking accounts. So, these figures
reflect some casual weighting together of the relatively small thrifts
and the relatively big commercial banks at over 80 percent. For the
thrifts I don't know whether to assume 50/50 and then come up with
something like 80 percent for the combined total for these weeks. But
they expect, as Steve said, that this will decline when we get over
the initial shift.
MR. FORD. This assumes what--that $13 or $16 billion out of
$40 billion for the whole year is already behind us?
MR. AXILROD. Yes, that's the monthly average [for January].
Effectively, it's $20 billion going in from then, so it's almost half.
MR. FORD. Looking at the numbers, my feeling is that the
assumption that in one month we already have half of the full year's
shift is where we are most vulnerable.
That is why I think we have to
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes.
Let me say that we not
retain the right to change these [ranges].
only have survey data now, for what it's worth, but that these shifts
are so big that it does not appear that we can explain a large part of
the shift by an exceptional decline in savings accounts. Savings
accounts have been declining pretty fast, but they were declining
pretty fast in December. And money market funds are going up very
rapidly now. So, if you make some allowance for how much is going out
of savings deposits into money market funds, there isn't all that big
a residual left to explain what is going into NOW accounts. That
tends to confirm that most of it came out of checking accounts on the
first blush.
MR. MAYO. Well, Paul, the fascination of this arithmetic
that I was just doing is that basically averaging the two--M-1A and M1B--neutralizes the transfer evaluation problem. All one is doing in
that way is just isolating what smaller part of this may have come

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from M2 into one of the M1s.
It seems to me that perhaps part of the
defense we could use when people say our figures are no good on these
transfers is that it really doesn't matter if one looks at M-1A and
M-1B together.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It literally does not matter if you could
make an assumption that it is coming half and half; you would get
mathematical precision in that answer. But it does throw it off as
soon as you depart from that assumption.
MR. MAYO. Well, now wait a minute. I don't think the half
and half has much to do with what I'm saying. I am only saying that
we are neutralizing; it doesn't matter whether it's half and half or
two-thirds or three-fourths. This averaging says how much is coming
from M2 or somewhere outside of the M1 concept.
MR. PARTEE. Well, the averaging gives a nice low figure.
That's all one can say.
MR. AXILROD.
MR. MAYO.

I'm not sure I follow your averaging.

Well, I don't want to take time here.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, in fact, we are never going to know
in the end how much came out of M2 and M1.
MR. MAYO. The more we can make the transfer issue a
subsidiary issue, the less trouble we are going to get into on that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The other way of handling it is the way
Governor Teeters suggested last time:
Add savings deposits. The
trouble with that is that it's quite evident right now that savings
deposits are declining very rapidly for entirely extraneous reasons,
so that doesn't give any satisfactory answer.
MR. GRAMLEY. The reasons aren't entirely extraneous.
put on monetary restraint--

If we

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, extraneous to these shifts here.
I
think all we have to do at the moment for purposes of our discussion
now--we have presentational problems--is decide whether we want to
talk off the right side of the sheet or the left side of the sheet.
MR. ROOS. The left side is easier because those are the
figures we have used in the past.
It seems to me we have to recognize
that there will be a period of adjustment. I feel more comfortable
using the left side, not that I don't think we could adjust to either
one.
But in your testimony last year, for example, you talked about 4
to 6-1/2 percent for M-1B; and our Bluebooks and our actions last year
were all based on the figures as shown in the left column. I'm just a
little more comfortable with them, but we can use either one if we
stick with it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The really important thing is that we keep
in mind in our comments which one we are talking about. We can talk
about both of them, I guess, and decide the presentational issues
afterwards. Let me just say one other thing, which I didn't say
yesterday. The President is going to make a speech on Thursday; he's

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going to present a State of the Union Message or some kind of long
message outlining his economic program on the 18th. I think that is
the current schedule. It's always possible that that is going to
slip. At the moment my testimony is scheduled for the 19th. That
probably will be delayed for that reason and, with the agreement of
the [Congressional] committees, we will submit the report after the
statutory deadline so that we have a chance to write the report in the
I don't mean delay very long. It
light of what the President says.
would be, say, Tuesday of the following week instead of Friday the
20th of the previous week. It is more likely than not that the whole
schedule will be shoved back by several days in the light of the
President's schedule, although I can't be certain of it. There is a
substantive problem, to the extent it's relevant, that conceivably
knowing what the President has to say might shade our own judgments
here. I only say this because I don't know that we have to be
absolutely conclusive today. I'd like to come as close to it as
possible and make at the very least a tentative judgment; but we can
What
reconfirm it between now and whatever date [the report is made].
is today's date? Today is the third, so we're talking almost three
weeks before we actually report. We may or may not want to make use
of that [interval].
MS. TEETERS. We may also want to shift [the ranges] in July,
which we haven't done for the past two years, because we will have a
better idea of how much of the program is going to pass Congress. The
shape of the program may be very different from what has been proposed
this month.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes, we may be able to take some account
of that, but we won't know how Congress will react. We won't know a
lot of things, so there will be some continuing uncertainties. The
only other thing I would say as a preliminary point--in terms of
psychology, imagery, and substance in the light of what we have said
in the past--is that I don't see how we can avoid some reduction in
some or all of these targets, properly interpreted. I'm not saying
just what the arithmetic is going to look like, but-MR. PARTEE.

We are going to have to move M2 up, Paul.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
Who would like to comment?

Well, let us discuss it now at this point.

MR. WALLICH. We'll have some base drift anyway over two
years that at least offsets or more than offsets the reduction-comment?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
Mr. Morris.

Well, let us proceed.

Who would like to

MR. MORRIS. I'd like to suggest, Paul, if we do go ahead
with M-1A and M-1B guidelines for 1981, that we state the guidelines
In other words, I'd
abstracting from shifts in NOW accounts.
eliminate this bottom section because, with all due respect to the
quality of our staff, I don't think they can possibly come close in
estimating the shifts. The prima facie case is the fact that they
were off by $13 billion in the first week. And the idea that we are
going to see half of the total annual adjustment to NOW accounts in
one month goes against the grain of all prior experience. I just
don't believe it.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think there is any doubt that the
staff or anybody's staff or any member is incapable of making a
reliable judgment at this point on how big these shifts are going to
be. The only issue is whether to give a figure and say we are going
to revise it freely or not to give a figure at all. But I fully
accept what you say about the impossibility of [accurate estimates].
MR. MORRIS. The problem with giving a figure is that that is
what the press and the market will be taking as our target. And to
the extent that we deviate from it, they are going to say that we are
It puts us in a very vulnerable
again not meeting our guidelines.
position to establish guidelines on the basis of estimates that could
have a margin of error of plus or minus 100 percent or maybe more.
MS. TEETERS. That is the advantage of keeping M-1A. If we
have to raise the M-1B range later, it will show up as a reduction in
the M-1A range, so we could show our-MR. MORRIS. Not necessarily. Right now, with the ceilings
the same on demand deposits and NOW accounts, it seems to me that it
"Look,
would be in the interest of any banker to say to a customer:
if you want a NOW account, fine; but let's please close your savings
Maybe
account because there is no point in having two accounts."
shifts out of savings haven't been so great in the first week, but
that doesn't mean that they can't be great later on.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Of course, what really bothers me is not
only that we cannot estimate this shift now but that we won't be able
to estimate it very accurately after the year is over. Do you want to
comment on the substance of where the target--whether shadow or
otherwise--should be?
I think the important thing is that
MR. MORRIS. Well, no.
whatever targets we establish be ex NOW accounts.
If we put
MR. SCHULTZ. Do you think that's easier, Frank?
our targets [that way], when the money supply figures come out they
are going to be different from our targets. The average person in the
public doesn't understand all of these things. And anybody who does
try to look at the money supply figures--though I guess that's not the
average public to start with--will see that we publish target ranges
Isn't
and then the numbers that come out are outside of these ranges.
it better-MR. MORRIS. That's why my position is that we should have no
M1 targets but simply have targets for the larger aggregates.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Just so that the discussion can proceed,
let's try to resolve how we present the targets after we decide what
they should be, recognizing that there is an issue there. Your
position is that we shouldn't have an M1 target at all.
MR. MORRIS.

Right.

MR. PARTEE.

I just can't agree with that.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, you are going to have plenty of time
to say whether you agree or not. What M2--or M3--target would you
like to have, Mr. Morris?
MR. MORRIS.

I would take the lower ones, alternative II.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You'd actually raise them from this

year's?

MR. MORRIS. Well, I would rather not raise them from this
year's; I'd like to have the staff explain to me why we apparently
Obviously, I'd prefer to have a somewhat lower range.
must do that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Let's have a staff exegesis of that point.

MR. AXILROD. I don't think it's a matter of "must," but
essentially it's because last year growth in M2 was almost 1
percentage point above the target of 6 to 9 percent. We don't have
much evidence of significance in the past two years that velocity of
M2 rises or falls much. What seems to be developing is that, because
of institutional changes, we now have assets in M2 on which the rates
offered by institutions vary with market rates. So, the spreads
between the active part of those assets and market rates don't open up
to the extent they used to and we don't get large shifts in and out of
Therefore, it doesn't seem
those deposits to the extent we used to.
unreasonable to think that we wouldn't get much change in the velocity
of M2 this year. In fact, we have assumed about a 1 percentage point
increase in velocity because we have a GNP projection of 9-1/2 percent
for the year and alternative I assumes an M2 growth of about 8-1/2
So, in our projection of what is consistent with M-1A and Mpercent.
1B we are allowing for about a 1 percentage point increase in the
velocity of M2. Another factor to consider, of course, if you look at
it from the credit side and not from the side of the public's demand
for assets, is that M2 except for the large CDs that are in M3 is
essentially institutional credit. And given our estimates of the
amount of mortgages and consumer loans and so forth that have to be
financed at banks, we think banks are going to have to bid for a
certain amount of funds to meet those demands and to maintain their
place in the market. So, those are the factors that get us to this
estimate, which is higher than the Committee's tentative range adopted
in July. I would say also that at midyear we were assuming that M2
growth was going to be high in the Committee's range for 1980 or even
[above it].
We never expected it to be down toward the midpoint of
Those are essentially the
that 6 to 9 percent range for 1980.
reasons.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Just as a little aside on the precision
with which these figures are calculated and the weight put on small
deviations from the target range:
M2 got benchmarked 0.3 of a
percentage point higher based upon a one-day observation on call data
of RPs for nonmember banks in March.
MR. AXILROD.

I thought it was only one or two tenths.

MR. MORRIS. Well, after that explanation, Mr. Chairman, I
think I would stay with the tentative guidelines for M2 and M3 we
established last year.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
percent, in other words?

You mean 6 to 9 and 6-1/2 to 9-1/2

MR. MORRIS. I mean 5-1/2 to 8-1/2 percent for M2 and 6-1/2
to 9-1/2 percent for M3.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
down to where?

Wait a minute.

You are going from these

MR. MORRIS. Steve says that he would expect [M2] to be
coming in at the upper end of the range, but that our GNP projection
is compatible with 8-1/2 percent on M2.
If you want to make that 9
percent, that would be all right with me. We can make it 6 to 9
percent for M2 and 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent for M3.
If there's ever a
year when we ought to have a tight monetary guideline, it's this year.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Okay.

Who else?

Mr. Black.

MR. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I think your comment a while ago
provided a good backdrop for the statement of these guidelines. We
have to show some lowering in the ranges. Trying to get at how much
that ought to be is a very difficult question. It's helpful if we go
back and look at what we got in 1979 and 1980.
I'm not sure I have
the right figures on this, because I'm not sure exactly what the NOW
account adjustment should have been for 1979. But as best we can
estimate--Steve, you can correct me if this is wrong--it looks as if
M-1B was running about 6.5 percent in 1979, abstracting from NOWs and
that sort of thing, and came out at about 6.8 percent in 1980.
Comparable figures for M-1A would have been 6-1/2 percent--although
I'm not quite certain of that one--for 1979 and 6-1/4 percent for
1980.
On M2, we don't have that adjustment problem; M2 grew 9 percent
in 1979 and 9.8 percent in 1980.
So, in general, we could say that
there was a small deceleration in M-1A and there was a small
acceleration in M-1B probably.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If I may just interrupt you, Bob:
page in the Bluebook are these past annual figures?
MR. BLACK.

On what

They are not in there.

MR. AXILROD. It's page 5, but we don't have the adjusted
figure for M-1A in there.
MR. BLACK. What we did--and I'm not sure we are right--was
to construct that, but the latest information we had was that about 45
percent was assumed to have come [from] savings.
I wouldn't put too
much stock in the figures I got; the main point I am trying to make is
that there has been either no deceleration or comparatively little.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it's an interesting point.
just wondering, Steve:
Do you have any rough figures?

I was

MR. AXILROD. I don't have them with me but I can get them.
I'll get them and report.
MR. BLACK. I don't think that changes my point, but I would
like to know those figures and would welcome having them. Anyway,
there hasn't been a whole lot [of deceleration], so I would opt for

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alternative II. One could argue that that's too much deceleration,
but another point--the matter of base drift, which I think our critics
are going to raise on this--is that lowering the range by 1 point in a
sense compensates in large part for that upward drift in the base for
both M-1A and M-1B since the ranges in alternative II would encompass
a 1/2 percentage point downdrift in our [tentative] '81 targets, using
the midpoint of the fourth quarter of last year as the base. For
example, if we came out right at the midpoint of the target I'm
suggesting, it would involve actual growth of M-1B from the fourth
quarter of 1980 figure of about 3.2 percent, which would be within the
range of 3 to 5-1/2 percent. But to a large extent it's to get rid of
that base drift that we advocate this. I don't think we could really
say that we want to raise the rate of growth expressed from that
midpoint. That just doesn't make any sense. We are up here somewhere
and we can't say:
Well, the targets start down here. But in choosing
how much we want them to come down, I think we have to consider that.
So far as what we publish for the public, that is a
devilishly difficult question. I reached a point that is somewhat of
a compromise of what Larry Roos said in that I think in choosing our
targets we have to abstract from the NOW accounts. But in expressing
these targets, I can visualize all the close Fed observers out there
setting up megaphones in charts like those in the lower tier of the
ones in the Bluebook and putting in the figures as they come in. And
unless we give them those ranges at the bottom, with all the caveats
that ought to go with them, they are going to have problems fitting
the figures into anything like this.
I think we ought to say one
further thing, which relates to something I believe you were trying to
get at as we closed yesterday:
That we think this is loaded heavily
on the front end. That is, we expect to have excessive growth in M-1B
early and then to see it come back within the target, we hope;
similarly, we expect very weak growth [in M-1A] in the first part of
the year and we are going to be outside our range but hope to be in
I don't know of an easy way to do it. It's going to
[by year-end].
be awfully confusing. But on balance that seems to me the best way to
do it; I think it is what Nancy was advocating.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let me just get clear where you are. If
you were working from the left-hand side of the sheet handed out this
morning, you are talking about 3 to 5-1/2 percent for M-1B?
MR. BLACK.

That's right, yes sir.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
What about M2 and M3?

You have 2-1/2 to 5 percent for M-1A.

MR. BLACK. I would just accept the ranges that the staff has
worked out as compatible, as indicated in alternative II.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You are not unhappy about going higher?

MR. BLACK. No, I don't really have any insight that would
lead me to suspect their figures.
I'd rather trust theirs than ours.
If it were not for the base drift, I would opt for alternative I. I
think that would be sufficient deceleration. It's not implausible to
argue [for a deceleration] since we overshot. In a sense, we can't
get away from that and we shouldn't slow it down too fast. But I do
think people are going to raise that matter of base drift; and unless

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we can say we somehow considered it, I think we are going to have some
problems on that from the public. This seems to me an easier way of
doing it because the only kind of growth rates that are going to make
sense to a layman are the growth rates from where we ended up. That's
about all I believe any layman is going to understand. Tomorrow, I'm
not going to understand!
MR. PARTEE. May I ask Jim a question about this? The whole
business is just so unclear to me. If President Black's
recommendation were accepted by the Committee, would that be a tighter
monetary growth target than you assumed in the Greenbook? He's opting
for the 1 point [reduction]--that is, alternative II, with M2 and M3
the way they are specified here. Would that be tighter than your
assumption in the Greenbook?
MR. KICHLINE. We would perceive it to be tighter; we view
either M-1A or M-1B to be more closely related to developments in the
economy than M2.
So, as I understand it, [Mr. Black's recommendation]
would be a 1 point reduction on ranges for the narrower aggregates,
which is 1/2 point tighter than we had assumed.
MR. PARTEE.
that right?

So you keyed in on alternative I, in effect.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. They keyed to the midpoint of that.
don't know whether it implies necessarily-MR. KICHLINE.
MS. TEETERS.

Is

I

It's 8-1/2 percent on M2.
What would this do to your nominal GNP growth?

MR. KICHLINE. Well, it would be down a little. I must say
that I would treat all of this with a great deal of caution.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Who else?

Governor Wallich.

MR. WALLICH. Bob Black to some extent has made my speech for
me because I, too, think that the seeming severity of these targets is
somewhat modified by the base drift. Now, the base drift could be
figured from the midpoint. Then it would have been, I think, 1-1/2
points for M-1A and M-1B; I was wrong yesterday in saying it was 2-1/2
points because I didn't take into account the revised numbers in the
footnote. On M2 I think it's 2-1/4 points, if you start from the edge
of the band, assuming that we allow ourselves leeway at least up to
the edge of the band. There's still a little leeway, 1/4 point, on
M-1A and M-1B, and 1 percent on M2.
So what we do in the way of
pulling down under either alternative I or II we undo by this base
drift.
It's true that this is money that went into the economy in
1980 and it isn't going to go in hereafter. But Chuck Partee
yesterday made the point that getting back on track really means
running below track for a while if we have been above track. So the
Partee integral, as it were--money under that curve--is stabilized.
By the same principle, I think we have to look at the overshoot. I am
somewhat encouraged by reading that on our new money demand function
these projections really involve an upward shift of the curve, even
though they involve an expectation of a downward shift on the old
curve. In other words, we would have a fair reason to expect that
shift for M-1A and M-1B. I'm not happy with M2, and I would suggest

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pulling that down. It's true that we really can't control it very
well; maybe controlling the economy is the only way of controlling M2.
But I fear that it's going to be our one reliable guide if M-1A and M1B behave peculiarly because of the adjustments; and there is the
possible acceleration of growth in M-1B as savings accounts are
transferred into it. The levels of M2 proposed here under either
alternative I or II allow for fairly good growth of nominal GNP, so
that actually looks to me like a fairly comfortable target; if we
believe that there's some tendency for V2 to rise, it's excessive.
First, in stating the numbers, I
To come down to choices:
would leave out the recent shifts--they're too uncertain--and modify
the numbers later; second, I would go to alternative II; third, in
alternative II, I would modify M2 a little and take it to 6 to 9
percent instead of 6-3/4 to 9-3/4 percent and I would pull M3 down
accordingly. But I haven't really thought M3 out, and I'm quite
flexible on that. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm not quite sure what you are saying
about the targets we should state for M1.
MR. WALLICH.
without the--

I meant to say the left side of the sheet

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Without the bottom row?

MR. WALLICH. Yes, without the bottom because that then gives
us comparability. I understand what Nancy says: The figures the
public knows about are those on the right-hand side. We will have to
supply continuous translations of the visible figures into the target
figures.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Guffey.

MR. GUFFEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The discussion that is
taking place around this table this morning suggests that there's
enough confusion, and we should not confuse the public further by your
testimony late in February. With that premise, it seems fairly clear
to me that we have no choice, as you stated earlier this morning, but
to publish growth ranges for the year 1981 that are lower than what we
had in 1980, even though we didn't achieve them. Thus, I would opt
for alternative I, the straight 1/2 percentage point reduction in the
M-1A and M-1B ranges from the published ranges of 1980 without the
bottom line that's on the left-hand side. With respect to M2 and M3,
I'm inclined just to adopt ranges that are 1/2 percentage point below
what we established for 1980 as well, with a caveat or an explanation
when you testify that at the time of the required July testimony you
will reveal all of these shifts, believing that most of the shifts in
NOWs will have taken place by that time. You would describe then what
happened in 1980 and 1981 but with the assurance that we're moving
toward a bit more restraint in 1981 than we had in 1980.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Solomon.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I basically agree with what Roger
Guffey has suggested:
the 1/2 point reduction on the M1 ranges. We
might consider a somewhat different approach on M2 and M3, however.
It seems to me that you could say to the [Congressional] committee

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that, given the uncertainty with regard to the new instruments and the
structural and transitional shifts, we want to widen the range. We
could widen it symmetrically and make it 5 to 10 percent instead of 6
to 9 percent. Or, if we feel there would be too much criticism of the
widened range, then I would say that we are keeping it at 6 to 9
percent but we will have a clearer fix on it in July. Therefore, we
are putting the committee on notice that we can't assess the effect of
these structural shifts and these new financial instruments completely
and that in July the numbers may be different and the targets for the
rest of the year may be different.
MR. PARTEE.

But those shifts wouldn't do much to M2, would

they?
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I'm not talking about the NOW
accounts here. I'm talking about the developing financial
instruments--the money market funds or six-month money market
certificates.
MR. PARTEE.

Oh, I see.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. It seems to me that even though one
can borrow against a six-month money market certificate, at least at
Citibank, some of the components of M2 such as that, which are growing
fast, are much closer to investments than to money in the transactions
sense. Now, I know one can write a check on a money market fund but,
even so, the people I see and speak with are considering these things
and the rates paid on them to be much closer to Treasury bills, for
example, than to passbook savings. So, we're getting into a new area
with this kind of instrument and it seems to me we can argue either
for a broader range for this year or for temporarily keeping the same
range and then reporting on it in July.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Schultz.

MR. SCHULTZ. Well, abstracting from the Partee integral and
the Wallich differential and given my lack of confidence in the
forecast and estimates of velocity and inflation, I have a very
unscientific proposal.
I think we ought to lower the M-1A and M-1B
ranges by 1/2 percentage point from the ranges of last year and keep
M2 and M3 where they were last year. It seems to me that we knew in
the middle of last year that the relationships between the M1s and M2
and M3 were not right. We probably should have changed those ranges
in July, and I don't think we're going to catch a lot of flak by not
changing them now. I do think that most people still look at M1,
particularly M-1B now, so I feel it's important to lower that by 1/2
percentage point. But it seems to me that, given the uncertainties,
that's about the best we can do.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. SCHULTZ.

Bank credit?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. SCHULTZ.

What would you do about the bottom row?

No.

Oh, you mean how to present it?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Yes.

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MR. SCHULTZ. Well, I agree with Nancy that it's easier to
talk in terms of the actual money supply data than to try to [adjust]
the money supply figures as they're coming out week-by-week [in order
to] abstract from [the shifts] every week. I think it's easier to try
to explain it one time rather than every week, and that's what we'd
have to do. So, it seems to me better to go ahead and make the
changes in the target ranges and try to explain it and do it one time.
To have to go through that process each week when the figures come out
would be much more confusing than to try to tinker with the targets.
Either way is lousy, but the one is lousier than the other.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Fred assumes that he can survive
[without] impeachment! The [Congressional] committee-MR. SCHULTZ.

Well, sometimes Chairmen are expendable.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Boehne.

MR. BOEHNE. There is a two-part process to this target
business. One is the setting of the targets and the other is the
hitting of the targets. Today, setting the targets is uppermost in
I
our minds but, as the year goes on, hitting them becomes important.
think the realities of the economy, given what we see for nominal GNP
and the outlook for fiscal policy, are such that we'd be very lucky to
hit even the upper end of alternative I, let alone the midpoint, or
Even with a reasonable
even [the upper end of] alternative II.
effort, we'd be lucky to hit the upper end of alternative I. But I
favor alternative I and I would key on M-1B. I think that's what most
people look at, and I would emphasize the 1/2 percentage point
reduction there. I would make the other Ms compatible with that, and
I think that means that we do have to raise the M2 and M3 ranges. As
far as the presentation, I would drop the bottom half of the chart;
the top half is confusing enough.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Rice.

MR. RICE. Well, Mr. Chairman, nearly all of the economic
forecasts indicate little or no growth for this year. Our own
forecast, of course, indicates almost no growth, at 0.1 percent for
I would prefer to see the targets set at a level that would
1981.
permit some real growth during the year. But we appear to be
committed to this 1/2 percentage point reduction in the target ranges.
I hope we're not committed to a 1/2 point reduction every year
hereafter, but we do seem to be so committed this year. It seems to
me that any pulling back from that would be interpreted as backing out
of our commitment to monetary restraint. So, I would go along with
what almost everyone has recommended so far--alternative I. I would
take the target ranges specified under alternative I for M-1A and M-1B
I take it that the ranges suggested for M2
as well as for M2 and M3.
and M3 are those thought most consistent with the 1/2 percentage point
reduction of the M-1A and M-1B ranges.
I'd just like to add something else. I would normally not
want to take political considerations into account, but it seems to me
to be an especially bad time to risk any kind of political
confrontation. The Administration is seeking some real economic
growth. While it calls for a policy of monetary restraint, it also
emphasizes the need for a steady monetary policy. The word "steady"

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appears in all of their pronouncements about monetary policy. It
seems to me that increasing monetary restraint at this time is not a
steady monetary policy. So, any increased restraint beyond what we
have previously committed ourselves to--for example, [going] to a 1
percentage point reduction--I'm sure would be seen as not very steady.
So, the ranges that have been proposed under alternative I would be
the most restrictive, consistent with any possible growth at all.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. RICE.

What would you do about the bottom row?

I would throw that out.

I wouldn't try to explain

that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Roos.

MR. ROOS. Yes sir, Mr. Chairman.
I'll be brief but please
don't interpret my brevity as an inability to go through much of what
has already been said. I would opt for alternative I.
I believe we
are committed to a policy of steady restraint with a gradual reduction
in the rate of money growth in order to have an impact ultimately on
reducing the core rate of inflation. Intellectually, especially
recognizing that a rather overly expansive growth of money might have
occurred last year--we were a bit above the top of our M-1B range--to
jam that down too abruptly could have serious effects on the real
economy. I think a 1/2 percentage point reduction in the M-1B range
and a commensurate reduction in the ranges for the other aggregates is
in order.
It maintains consistency with what we announced last year.
I agree with what someone else said that the real key is our ability
to achieve our targets.
I don't think our problem in the past few
years has been one of setting incorrect targets; it has essentially
been our inability to achieve those targets. We talked about that
yesterday, and I expressed my reservations.
In sum, I would opt for
alternative I, omitting the bottom portion of it.
MR. SCHULTZ.
with M2 and M3?
MR. ROOS.

I'm not sure I understand.

What would you do

I would go with alternative I.

MR. SCHULTZ.

All the way down the line?

MR. ROOS. All the way down the line, recognizing that in our
peculiar way of looking at things we will concentrate on M-1B. But I
certainly would not be unhappy with [that].
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Mayo.

MR. MAYO. My first fascination, Mr. Chairman, was with the
M-1A and M-1B ranges of alternative II on the grounds that it helped
get over any problems you might have in testifying with regard to base
drift. The longer I thought about that, the more I came to the
conclusion that the base drift isn't significant enough, at least in
thinking it through myself, to cause you that much trouble. As a
practical matter, I think we're better off with alternative I after
all.
It retains the promise of a 1/2 percentage point [reduction] and
I think we might be risking more economic stagnation with a 1
percentage point promise. I find it congenial to go right down the
line on alternative I.
I don't think we need to worry about the M2

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problem. The 7 to 10 percent looks higher; it is higher than our old
6 to 9 percent, again because of the farther drift that we have from
I would have a very minor
the aggregates that we can control.
qualification if the Committee were to accept alternative II for any
reason, and that is that I'd get rid of those quarter points. We're
boxing ourselves in too closely using quarter points; it's better to
have either 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 or 7 to 10 percent than to try to split it
I think that's foolish precision. So, I would come
into quarters.
down with alternative I.
I wish I could agree with Fred Schultz that we could explain
this once and not have to go over it every week. But as long as we
have weekly money supply figures, I'm resigned to our fate of having
to explain this every week. We're going to have to be prepared to use
publicly both sets of figures; we should decide on the emphasis,
though, right off the bat and then gear it each time to remind people
who only look at these for 20 minutes on a Friday afternoon or
"Oh yes, I
whenever they pick up their papers. They will say:
And then they will come back the next
remember something about that."
week and have forgotten all about it and we will have to say the same
thing over again. I think we will have to do that. Even though it
may seem to add confusion, I think it actually will add some
clarification in the public mind.
MR. BLACK. Bob, do you mean that each week you would publish
a figure abstracting from NOW accounts?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I don't think we can do that.

MR. MAYO. I don't think we would do that, but we should
indicate our caveat every week--the principle that's involved here.
MR. ROOS. Would it be feasible, Mr. Chairman, in view of the
problem we will have in the next few months, to use that as a hook to
Is there
suspend temporarily the publication of the weekly figures?
any sense in that?
now.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, let's not raise that subject right
You're saying, Mr. Mayo, don't give these bottom row targets?

MR. MAYO. I don't think we need to go to the extent of
giving the precise figures, but we should give some qualitative caveat
every week when we publish the data as to what they mean.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Corrigan.

MR. CORRIGAN. Mr. Chairman, on the presentational part, I
think we have to try to get as much emphasis focused on the right-hand
part of that table as we can. I agree very much with Governor Schultz
on that point. On the substance, I come out for alternative I
basically, partly because I'm not too concerned about this base drift
either. After we get through, no one will be able to tell what it is.
Also, I think alternative II really runs a risk of wrenching the
[economy] too hard. I am a little concerned about the larger numbers
on the ranges for the broader aggregates. I just wonder whether we
couldn't look at M2 and M3 as 7 to 9 and 7 to 10 percent. That is a
little narrower on M2, but I'm not sure that's all bad if Steve is
I'm most concerned
right about the things that are happening there.

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about bank credit because, given what is happening in the economy and
given that so many of our big firms are continuing to lose money and
all the rest, there is going to be a lot of lending activity in banks
[this] year. So, I would not be allergic to putting bank credit at 7
to 10 percent either. In sum, I would have the M1 ranges as they
appear in alternative I; I'd take a chance on 7 to 9 percent on M2 and
7 to 10 percent on M3 and bank credit.
As for the presentational part, if I were you I might even be
willing to go a bit further and come fairly close to committing to
going back [to Congress] as early as April to try to explain what has
happened and what these numbers might mean. If you do that, this idea
that Bob Mayo had earlier might have some merit in the [period of]
transition. That would be to try to use an average of the right-hand
column for M-1A and M-1B--not as a firm target, but as a talking
point. You could then say without a great deal of difficulty in
communication that basically we're shooting for the average of M-1A an
M-1B to grow within a 3 to 5 percent range during this period in which
the transitional problem is the greatest. The 3 to 5 percent average,
I think, does encompass the range of possibilities that we're thinking
of in terms of the shift. And they are convenient numbers because
even the upper end falls below the numbers that everybody has been
looking at in terms of actual growth in the narrow aggregates for the
past year. I don't know how it would work out in precise terms, but I
for one would not be allergic to trying to use that handle as a way to
get over the worst part of this transition, leaving open as I said the
possibility of going back up there as early as April.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Teeters.

MS. TEETERS. I'm not really enthusiastic about lowering the
ranges at all.
We've been concentrating on page 6, but if you turn to
page 7 it shows that the implied interest rates are extremely high.
If we had to publish our projections of interest rates, we might have
a different attitude toward this.
Even with a 1/2 percentage point
reduction, the economic outlook is extraordinarily bad. We've used
every gimmick we could to get [the economy] not to decline, including
shifts in demand for money and higher rates of velocity. All sorts of
things could go wrong, and there's no room for any slippage at this
point in that projection. But I see I'm all alone in not wanting to
lower the ranges, so I could go along with taking them down the 1/2
percentage point. I would strongly support Governor Rice in saying
that I don't see anything in this system that says we have to take the
ranges down year after year. There is a certain amount of money
growth that is necessary in this economy. If we keep this up, we're
going to get to zero [money growth] and we're going to have five years
of total stagnation if we commit ourselves to that course.
So, I
would support alternative I as stated in the Bluebook. If my memory
serves me right, last year we didn't like the ranges on M2 and M3 that
were said by the staff to be consistent with our range on M1, so we
lowered them. And we missed them. I think the best judgment as to
what are the most consistent numbers is that being provided by our
staff.
Even though [lower ranges for M2 and M3] look cosmetically
nice, we could be sitting here a year from now with the same result:
That we had cosmeticly nice looking ranges and then missed them by the
amount that the staff said we were going to miss. So, I strongly
suggest that we take alternative I as specified.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Is that what we did last year?

MS. TEETERS. Yes. What we did was to take the M-1A and M-1B
choice but we didn't like the looks of [the associated] M2 and M3
ranges, so we lowered them. And then we missed them. We didn't take
the staff's judgment as to what was the proper relationship between
the M1 ranges and those for M2 and M3.
MR. AXILROD.
that. That may be the
we were saying [M2 and
Committee expected. I
January.

I don't remember what happened a year ago on
case. It certainly was the case in July that
M3 growth] would be a little higher than the
don't remember [the circumstances last]

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
the narrower aggregate?
MS. TEETERS.

Yes.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
SPEAKER(?).

Did we miss M2 by more than we missed

Yes.

What was the [miss] again?

MS. TEETERS. We got 9.8 percent on a 6 to 9 percent range
for M2 and 10 percent on a 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent range for M3.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We'll improvise.
figures are any good to start with.

[Unintelligible]

if the

MS. TEETERS. I would also say that we ought to concentrate
on the right-hand side of the page, as I said earlier. We have a
tremendous public relations problem. There are an awful lot of people
with sharp pencils out there; the more we tell them what we know and
explain to them where our uncertainties are, I think the better our
credibility is.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Are you saying announce the bottom line?

MS. TEETERS. Announce the bottom line. And I'd tell them
just how uncertain we are about that bottom line. We could even put
the calculations all on one side and show them where we made the
assumptions and what the changes are.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Gramley.

MR. GRAMLEY. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to pick up on the
thought that Ed Boehne laid out:
That we ought to focus very, very
carefully not just on the original perceptions that the public has of
whether or not we've lowered our targets and your problems--and you're
going to have plenty explaining this to the Banking Committees--but
also on the perception of policy as the year develops. If we think we
faced a credibility problem in 1980, we have seen nothing yet.
It's
going to be potentially 10 times as large in 1981. Consider, if you
will, what will happen if we publish a range of 3-1/2 to 6 percent for
M-1B. The first month of the year we had growth of 16 percent. It
was 16 percent the first month! Furthermore, our expectation is that
if we hit the midpoint of that range, the fourth quarter-over-fourth
quarter increase will be 6-3/4 percent. If Ed Boehne is right--and I

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strongly agree with him--we're much more likely to end up at the upper
end than the lower end of that range. So the public is going to look
month after month after month at an M-1B number that is growing, let
us say, at 8 to 8-1/2 percent on average, while the upper end of the
target range is 6 percent. I just don't think that's viable. The
same argument in reverse is true with regard to M-1A.
So, if we're going to put out ranges, we really have to go
for the bottom line. We have to tell the public these ranges are
enormously uncertain but are our best guess of what we think actually
will happen this year. This isn't just a matter of public perception.
It is, as you indicated, a fact that we are going to be terribly
uncertain ourselves as to what these numbers mean. And how the heck
we can conduct monetary policy sensibly with monetary aggregates, when
the monetary aggregates are just literally off the wall, I do not
know. But it seems to me that Frank Morris has a good suggestion. As
a minimum, we should put principal emphasis on the monetary aggregate
that is least disturbed by these transitional phenomena that we're
dealing with, which would be M2.
I don't think we can drop M-lA and
M-1B. I wouldn't go that far; I think we have to have some narrow
money figures. But I would go for using M2, announced as our
principal target. I think we ought to go with the staff range for
that on page 6, and I would go for alternative I rather than
alternative II. Looking at history, we find that broad money as
presently defined in M2 has a rate of increase that tends to be 3-1/2
to 3-3/4 percent on average above the narrow money numbers. So I
think we can justify that upward movement in the range for that
reason. Additionally, when we're going into a period in which the
attractiveness to the public of one element of M2--NOW accounts--is
increased, that is going to attract some funds from elsewhere into M2,
so we can justify it on that grounds, too. So, I would go with an M2
range of 7 to 10 percent, using that as the principal one, and using
the ranges for M-1A and M-1B in alternative I with a statement at the
bottom of the page instead of in the middle of the page. And I would
use the left-hand side rather than the right.
MR. SCHULTZ. How we are going to get a consensus out of
this, I don't have the faintest idea.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Balles.

MR. BALLES. Well, like almost everyone else who has spoken
here, as far as the takeoff point I certainly would use the actual
growth rates for M-1A and M-1B that we achieved in 1980 and not try to
correct for base drift. With respect to M-1A and M-1B, alternative I
is what I would support.
It does give credence to that very important
perception problem that you've mentioned:
We at least have in mind,
abstracting from shifts, a 1/2 point reduction on those two ranges.
I
share Jerry Corrigan's misgivings about the M2 and M3 ranges being a
little on the high side under that alternative I. As I look back on a
table here showing the differences month-by-month and cumulatively
between M-1B and M2 for last year, it turns out that there was a 3
percentage point spread, bottom line, net.
It did fluctuate over the
year; it bulged in the spring and since August the difference has
varied between 2 and 3 percentage points.
I'd be prepared to be
generous, based on last year's experience, and allow M2 to grow by 3
points more than M-1B. Adding 3 points to the M-1B alternative I
range would bring that to 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent versus the figures

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I'd be fairly
shown under alternative I for M2 of 7 to 10 percent.
strongly inclined to reduce that a bit. It would have one advantage,
among other things, of adding some credence to our gradual slowdown in
the sense that if we specify a range of 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent as
compared to the actual growth of 9.8 percent last year, at least the
upper end of our range would be a touch under what we actually
achieved in 1980.
For much the same reason, I would reduce the M3
range by 1/2 point from the 7-1/2 to 10-1/2 percent shown under
alternative I.
In terms of how to display the actual results versus the
results we would announce, abstracting from [shifts], I think the
first point is absolutely viable--that we do have something comparable
to last year. As for how we get a translation device [for explaining]
what is actually going on versus these ranges, abstracting from
changes, it seems to me that some possibilities have been offered.
I'm not prepared to recommend this yet without some more staff study
and some comment on feasibility by Steve, but in the Bluebook there
are two very interesting charts following page 9, which simply give
the ranges abstracting from changes and those including changes.
Based on my conviction that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm
simply suggesting the possibility as we go down the road month-bymonth of showing those kinds of charts to the public as a means of
explaining how to get from our announced ranges to the actual reported
numbers.
I'd put the actual reported numbers in the context of the
sort of chart device that is used in Charts 1 and 2 following page 9
of the Bluebook.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Partee.

MR. PARTEE. I'm reminded that many years ago, after a
difficult staff presentation, Bill Martin sometimes would say to the
Committee:
You better watch out or you may catch statisticitis!
I'd
say we've caught it. We have it in spades today. I really don't know
how it will all work out. I don't want to direct myself to the
presentational question because we're all over the lot and I really
think what to do is your choice, Paul.
I do think we ought to keep in
mind two points. One is that we have said, and it will be expected,
that we want to make some further progress in reducing growth in the
monetary aggregates. Now, if you look at our progress, it hasn't been
very rapid. And I see no great reason to expect that it will be rapid
this year either. So, to follow up on our promise, I think what we
ought to provide is minimal progress in reducing our expected growth
rates.
The second point that I think is terribly important is one
that Ed Boehne made. And that is that we are going to be judged by
how we're doing relative to the targets that we've put out. As the
year goes on, there will be more and more emphasis on how we're doing
and less and less emphasis on how we picked the targets in the first
I think
place. So, I'm inclined to go pretty much with Fred Schultz.
we ought to declare that in the interest of making further progress we
are going to reduce the growth ranges 1/2 point. Then we would have
to say that there are lots of adjustments because of all these
complications that are occurring, so we are going to have to tell you
what a 1/2 point is. And the 1/2 point reduction ought to be
restricted to the M-1A and M-1B categories. Jerry's idea, or I guess
it was Bob's, of averaging the two to give a sense that we haven't

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really given away the ballgame on this is probably a useful concept to
employ. On M2 and M3, I really do think we have to raise our ranges
some. We can't go along with 1/2 point reductions there. The reason
is simply that the relationship between the narrow aggregate and the
broader aggregates is going to be determined by interest rate
relationships among other things and there will be higher interest
rates than ever were contemplated when we first specified this
relationship a year ago.
I would go halfway and make it 6-1/2 to
9-1/2 percent on M2 and 7 to 10 percent on M3.
And I agree with
Jerry:
I don't see any reason to risk being low on bank credit;
nobody pays that much attention to it.
So, I'd make that 7 to 10
percent also because it's reasonable to think that it might be about
the same as M3, which is the broadest of the institutional aggregates
we have. But the main point is that we ought to declare that we are
reducing our objectives. And we ought to do it in a way that gives us
maximum opportunity not to go outside the ranges as the year goes on.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
reduce them?

Declare that we're reducing them but not

MR. PARTEE. Yes.
Well, who was that guy who said we ought
to back the troop ships into Vietnam and declare we won, and leave?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Ford.

MR. FORD.
I would come out as follows, which is basically
where Fred Schultz came out:
First of all, I'd speak in terms of the
unadjusted targets without all the [unintelligible] and I'd declare
that we are going to make a further reduction in the targeted growth
rates for both M-1A and M-1B as under alternative I.
I frankly am not
fully convinced that the rest of the adjustments in [alternative I]
that the staff suggested tentatively would have to be made are really
valid. On the face of it, they make it appear that we're not
undertaking a reduction. And given all the questions about it, I
think Nancy's point [is valid] that we would be running the risk of
running the economy into the wall.
I would make the opposite
assumption looking at page 7, because I don't understand how the staff
comes up with a reduction in the inflation rate and an increase in
every interest rate, including the mortgage rate, as we go through the
four quarters of the year. Going from the present high level of real
interest rates, that means that real rates get even higher. That's
why I think we have to take account of Nancy's concern, but not on the
basis of the table on page 7.
I'd be more inclined to think we might
have better luck than that.
If we actually do reduce the inflation
rate, by the fourth quarter I think the rates on page 7 would be lower
than in the first quarter rather than higher based on the notion that
interest rates reflect inflation. So, to make me feel a little less
worried about crashing the economy into the wall, I'd go with what
Governor Schultz said about M2 and M3 and use 6 to 9 percent and 6-1/2
to 9-1/2 percent.
Finally, with regard to the explanation, you obviously have
to go with however you feel most comfortable rationalizing it.
I
would consider one other alternative for explaining just how crucial
this estimating procedure is and that would be a very simple form of
sensitivity analysis.
I would run it something like this:
I'd say
that in the first month of the year we had something like a $15 to $20
billion shift into NOWs.
Our best guess--and I would call it that--is

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that this [total] will double over the rest of the year. We could be
off by a factor of over 100 percent in the growth of NOW accounts very
easily. In other words, instead of going to $40 billion, they could
go to $60 billion or even to $80 billion. That would mean that you,
the public, and you, the Congress, will be seeing horrible M-1B
numbers that could scare the heck out of you but not reflect a real
I'd put it that way and then take
change in what we're trying to do.
the best idea that I think has come up around the table--the idea that
Presidents Mayo and Corrigan mentioned--that if something horrible
like that were to happen, people would recognize that it would bring a
big drop in M-1A and a big pop in M-1B and that we'd still on average
be tightening. If I had to explain it tomorrow, that's the way I'd do
it.
But you have to do what you're comfortable with because you're
the one who's going to be under the gun.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Winn.

MR. WINN. Well, you have quite an expository problem. The
only advantage I see is that now instead of targets [unintelligible]
the Shadow Committee [unintelligible].
I think continuity in
exposition requires that we keep our numbers in line with last year as
a starting point. The only thing we can do honestly is to promise
adjustments and information as it develops. I think we have to give
them, for instance, what the adjusted range would be at the moment in
order to compare it with the figures as they are published because
that's what people are going to judge them by. And I think we have to
be on record as recognizing that these targets are on the old basis--I
don't see any way we can avoid that--and then promise that as
adjustments and information develop you will be back to indicate what
that means. To me the difference between alternatives I and II is
really not as important as is the recognition that we still are faced
with the problem of trying to reduce the ranges. I find alternative I
acceptable. Because of the continuity and exposition problem, I'd
reduce the M2 and M3 ranges at this point. We might have to go back
and change that, however, as things unfold. So, I'd be inclined to
start with alternative I [for M-1A and M-1B], with 6 to 9 percent and
For bank credit we probably have
6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent on M2 and M3.
to raise the range a little in light of market developments.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Boykin, you're left.

MR. BOYKIN. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Earlier in the meeting
Governor Partee expressed some confusion. This being my first
meeting, I hope you'll appreciate the dilemma I find myself in! If
he's confused-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You'll get more confused as you go on!
Governor Partee has been around here for a while.
MR. BOYKIN. I have some sympathy for alternative II, much
along the lines expressed earlier by those who were opting for that.
However, I also think alternative I would be the better position to
take, particularly given the uncertainties about what really is going
on. It does indicate our willingness to continue the effort for
restraint. So, I would be satisfied with alternative I and I would
probably be willing to take the ranges the way the staff has proposed
them all the way through. I also would stay to the left side of the

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table and I would associate myself with Willis Winn's comments on how
to try to explain it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
and orange juice.

Well, this morning we have a little coffee

SPEAKER(?).

Hear, hear!

SPEAKER(?).

We need it!

SPEAKER(?).

We're going to need more than that!

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. SCHULTZ.

How about a little scotch this morning?

You better provide something to sniff now!

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It's conceivable to me, since we're not
yet at the short-term targets, that the meeting may continue after
lunch a bit.
SPEAKER(?).

Are we going to eat here?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

No.
[Coffee break]

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
SPEAKER(?).
Committee!

Where are our absentees?

They're going to a shadow meeting of the

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I will accept the injunction to a
considerable degree that the presentational problem is going to have
to be decided by the Chairman when he testifies. I don't think
there's any readily soluble way. The more I think about it, the more
I think we have to give the public some indication initially, however
tentatively, of the way the real numbers might or might not come out,
just to give some flavor. The fact that they are way off--the jog at
the beginning of the year--I am worried about. It makes the charts
such as those in the Bluebook look not very good because we're so far
off [target] right off the bat. Maybe we can defer being even halfway
decisive about it, but I think we've got to give [the public] some
indication. That is my current conclusion on that. I certainly think
we have to show some reduction in the ranges, as I said at the
beginning. But I guess I do look at these targets differently than
some of you, or maybe all of you, look at them.
I think we accomplished two things this morning. In the
decision we will give some flavor of the general direction in which we
want to go [in setting the ranges in the future]; and that has to be
down, consistent with everything we've been saying. But maybe more
importantly in terms of how we come out in the remainder of the year,
once having stated the ranges, they become something of a discipline
on us. I'm not one who thinks that we have the capability of
necessarily reaching all these targets all the time, not only on a
month-to-month basis but even by year-end. You know, there's nothing
magic about the final quarter of a year. We cite these targets and
tend to look at them fourth quarter-to-fourth quarter. Last year we

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happened to have had a high fourth quarter. If we looked at an
average for the year as a whole, we came out within the target ranges;
but since the focus is on the fourth quarter-to-fourth quarter period,
they look a little high. It is quite possible, the way the figures
are going now, that if one looked at it from the fourth quarter of '79
to the first quarter of '81, we would look comfortably within the
targets that we set. Well, maybe not comfortably, but within anyway.
It depends upon what happens for the next two months. So, I think we
can exaggerate our control and the importance of being precise with
the ranges. But I don't think there's any question that there is a
discipline. That discipline operates, in my opinion, when we're in
the vicinity of the upper end of the target range; the rest of the
target range doesn't make much difference.
The way I observe what I've seen going on here for the last
couple of days--I hope not completely unfairly--is that we were
presented with a gloomy economic forecast by some standards. I could
imagine a considerably more gloomy one, in fact. The staff doesn't
have a real recession in this forecast but I don't think we could
discount having something that would be called a real recession.
That's not the only forecast one could have; one could obviously have
a more ebullient one too. There is a general question, which I guess
is the most important question, of how serious we are about dealing
with inflation. I got a little feeling, as I listened to the
conversation, that we're like everybody else in the world on that:
Everybody likes to get rid of inflation but when one comes up to
actions that might actually do something about inflation, implicitly
or explicitly, one says:
"Well, inflation isn't that bad compared to
the alternatives."
We see the risks of the alternative of a sour
economy and an outright recession this year. So, maybe there's a
little tendency to shrink back on what we say we want to do on the
inflation side. I don't want to shrink back very far; that is my
general bias for all the reasons we have stated in our rhetoric but
don't always carry through on. The history of these things in the
past, as we all keep telling ourselves, is that when we come to the
crunch, we back off.
In a general sense the question here is whether
we should back off.
In terms of the general setting that we have, my own guess
would be--and I suppose it can't be anymore than a guess--that almost
any range we set that shows a reduction will be readily accepted by
the Congress and the Administration and everybody else because we've
said we're going to do that. Everybody has [understood] this little
lesson that we've got to reduce the ranges in order to deal with
inflation, and we're not going to run into a lot of flak in the short
run about anything we're talking about or what has been set before us.
I obviously can't be sure of that, but that would be my assumption.
The only question I might get is: Why did you tentatively reduce the
ranges only by 1/2 percentage point?
I have not yet gotten the
question:
Why did you reduce them at all?
I'm not saying that these
people have thought this all through; I'm not suggesting that at all.
But that is the common impression.
Now,
upper side of
the range may
the upper end
going to have

in fact, what we're going to be doing is fighting the
the range; talk about the midpoints and the lower end of
not be very relevant. But I'm not sure that fighting
of the range isn't right where we should be if we're
a sour business outlook. People are going to be

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complaining about Federal Reserve policy. It is not the worst
position in the world to be in to say:
Look, our only risk is that
we're exceeding our range, not that we're down at the midpoint or
below. If we're in the low part of a range or at the midpoint of the
range and the economy is sour, we're sure to have everybody telling us
that we have to ease up because we're not even exceeding our own
ranges and the economy is awful.
So, I do think there is an element
of internal discipline and external explanation in assuming that the
relevant part of the range will be the upper part of the range and not
the midpoint or, certainly, the lower part of the range. The lower
part of the range in my conception of the world is something we'd
accept if some of these relationships go off; our instinctive judgment
is that we wouldn't want to be all that easy in an ordinary sense
despite the fact that the [monetary growth] figures were coming in
low, given what is going on in the economy and what is going on in
interest rates or whatever. We have a safety valve so we can say
we're not below our range.
But we will only be down there if [the
economy is performing] in a "satisfactory" way. So, the crucial
number here is the upper part of the range, and the forecast is based
upon the midpoint. I don't sit here and assume, frankly, that we're
going to be at the midpoint if the economy is going to be as bad as
the staff has projected, much less if the economy is worse than
projected. Indeed, if the economy is better than they projected,
which implies a whale of a lot of pressure on interest rates, we'll
probably also be at the upper part of the range. So, that's the
relevant number we're talking about, not the rest of the range, unless
something unexpected comes along and these numbers for some
institutional or other reason happen to come in low when interest
rates are declining and everything is going along more or less
swimmingly.
We have a great preponderance of opinion for alternative I
and for looking at it from the viewpoint of the left-hand side of the
sheet that was given us, leaving aside the question of how it's
actually presented. That gives us an upper end of the range of 5-1/2
or 6 percent, depending upon which one we look at, compared to an
actual outcome last year of 6-1/4 or 6-3/4 percent. It's a reduction
of something like 1/2 or 3/4 percentage point, depending upon which
one we look at.
I guess that's where we are.
I would, if anything,
make it lower than that rather than higher, again based upon the
assumption that we're going to be flirting with the high ends of the
ranges and not the low ends.
I am somewhat comforted, on balance, but
I don't know whether I'm more comforted than discomforted by the fact
that we won't be able to tell with much precision where we are anyway,
so far as the M1 figures are concerned. That does make M2 or M3
potentially more important, as a number of people have said. Let me
assume that the staff forecast is more or less right about the
relationship [between M1 and the broader aggregates], although there's
bound to be a good deal of uncertainty about that; the amount of
confidence one puts on that estimate is not enormous. But let me
assume that's the reasonable assumption as to the consistency between
the two.
If I convert that into my own feeling that the more relevant
issue is being at the upper end of the range rather than at the
midpoint, that in itself makes me willing to go toward a tighter
stated range in order to make sure that it is disciplining enough. We
have the presentational problem of whether to raise one or both of
those ranges.
It's a purely psychological problem regarding what that
does in terms of the imagery we are portraying at the moment. The

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2/2-3/81

staff's best guess on M2 is that 8-1/2 percent is consistent with the
midpoint of M1 in some sense. But at least with 8-1/2 percent you're
saying that's your best guess consistent with the nominal GNP
forecast, which is more relevant.
MR. AXILROD. Well, if you look specifically at the flow-offunds data, it might come out to something like 8.8 percent. We've
squeezed it down to 8-1/2 percent rather than up to 9 percent.
MR. PARTEE.

So, it's really close to 9 percent.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. But it's consistent with the GNP forecast;
that's more important than the M1 forecast in that respect.
MR. WALLICH.

And the base drift in this is 2-1/4 points?

MR. AXILROD. On the M1s it's 2-1/2 points; on M2 I don't
know the base drift. We don't really have that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't even know what the definition of
base drift is.
It depends upon whether you thought you were really
aiming at the midpoint of the previous year and there's an error in
that. Anyway, for the reasons I suggested, I would go below the 7 to
10 percent and 7-1/2 to 10-1/2 percent [shown under alternative I].
I'm not sure we want to go above where we were last year, but for the
psychological or presentational reasons I don't like going as high as
stated there. But I have no great compunction about announcing that
we expect to be at the high end of the range--that we would be
disturbed about being over the range but not at all disturbed about
being at the high end of it--and that the low end of the range is only
to take care of totally unexpected developments that might for some
reason reduce the attractiveness of money market funds or whatever.
We could get a development in the thrift industry such that they don't
become more eager competitors for money market certificates, so that
[lower end] was expressed for a variety of other contingencies that
conceivably could develop. We have a pretty mixed view on this, I
think. The Committee is pretty well split down the middle in the
initial comments between a 7 to 10 percent group and those who prefer
something less than that. There is a slight majority--seven--for less
than 7 to 10 percent, just using the M2 number.
The only other comment I would make is that we will be
announcing these targets a few days after the Administration is
announcing its program. I don't know what that's going to be. I
I'm not at
assume it's going to include Kemp-Roth for three years.
all sure it's going to include--my guess is it is not--a beginning
date of January 1, 1981.
I think it will be some time after that.
And I do think they are probably going to have a bigger expenditure
reduction number in the proposed program than conventional wisdom has
assumed--conventional wisdom now and perhaps conventional wisdom after
they announce it--is at all possible. But I suspect they are going to
have a very big number in there and put a lot of emphasis on the
importance of the changes they are trying to make in the structure of
the budget and, therefore, in the American economy. The question is
how our money supply numbers will play in connection with that tune-whether it will sound like we're doing business as usual or supporting
the program or whatever. I don't know quite how that will play, but
it is a psychological question.

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I guess what I am saying is that if it's the great
predominance of opinion that we go substantively, however presented,
for what is alternative I in the Bluebook, I would suggest that we
reduce the M2 and M3 numbers to some extent. The presentation would
suggest that we would be near the upper end of the ranges. That is
what I would propose. Presentationally, I think we have to give at
least a tentative view and try to avoid getting it written in
indelible ink in any way; I'd give a penciled-in tone for how the
actual number may look. You know, we're going to have to report what
the actual numbers are; and I think we have to give a target at some
point relevant to the actual numbers rather than say that we can
somehow adjust the actual numbers when we don't have a good enough
handle to adjust them on a week-by-week basis. By the same token, we
don't have a good enough handle to adjust the target on a week-to-week
basis either. But I think that can be a little vaguer concept than a
number we actually have to publish every week in print. Sooner or
later we will be forced into giving a target that allows for the
shift. My main reluctance about doing that at all decisively right
now is that there's such a jog in the actual pattern of the numbers
that come out right away. But I would, as I feel now, do it that way.
I've been playing around with just how we might present this
and give some sense of continuity. There is a possibility. The
problem is impossible, I hasten to say, because we really have three
sets of numbers. We have numbers based upon what we were estimating
last year, where we are now, and with further shifts [this] year. To
give some sense of continuity in terms of the M1 numbers anyway, I was
wondering whether we could take the cone we had last year, which is
the conventional way to express these things, and adjust it for what
actually happened to the numbers. That means that the actual figure
is very close to the cone for the fourth quarter. We could take the
top of that cone and extend it by whatever percentage we have decided
on here. It would be extended in the case of M-1B by 6-1/2 percent-we'd have to go off the right-hand side of the sheet--and by 4-1/4
percent for M-1A, if [alternative I] is the decision we make. Then we
would extend the bottom part of the cone by the same percentage and we
would have created a channel which is consistent with the 4 to 6-1/2
percent target or the 1-3/4 percent to 4-1/4 percent target. But the
cone would coincide with the channel by the fourth quarter. Thus we
would have established a channel in which to operate with exactly the
same upper end of the line as the cone. But the bottom end of the
channel starts from last year's target rather than where we are at the
moment. It's the same information; it's just presented in a different
way so that we can link the one target to the next.
I don't know
whether one would call that base drift or not.
It creates the same
channel we had last year.
MR. SCHULTZ.

Everybody who understands that raise their

hand!
MR. WALLICH. That means basing [unintelligible] base drift.
You're basing it on last year's targets and linking it up with last
year's terminal points of the cone?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

That's what you do, yes.

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MR. WALLICH. Yes. If you draw a channel for last year and a
new channel for this year, that will not be a straight line. There
will be an angle where they join.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That is true. One of the difficulties
with this portrayal is that there is an angle where they join. The
I don't
angle is so small it is not perceptible to the naked eye.
know that it's worth lingering over this; it's a presentational
matter. If we literally attached it to the cones with the current
estimates that we're using, the actual is 1/4 percentage point above
the cone. If we did it this way and we wanted to get in the channel,
our effective target from the actual is 1/4 percentage point lower
than the target itself would suggest.
But how do you explain it
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON(?).
technically in words? It's a simple-looking cone I can see, but how
do you put words around it?
MR. SCHULTZ ET. AL.

He just did.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I'm not sure it's a good idea. One
can go that far and it's fairly simple. I think I can explain that
much very, very easily. What gives me pause is that then I'd have to
say:
"But that new channel I just gave you isn't the right channel
That's
because now we're going to get more shifts into NOW accounts."
the real problem. This much can be explained simply.

percent.

MS. TEETERS. It sounds in fact more like 6-1/2 than 6-1/4
Is that what you're saying?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. [Yes], if we literally did what I just
described and did it from the cone instead of the actual and took the
present estimates of the cone--we could change them--but if we
accepted that one-third/two-thirds split instead of a 50/50 split. If
we took a 50/50 split, it comes out that the actual is just about on
the cone; if you take the one-third/two-thirds split, it is not. So,
it would imply that we're going to make that up during the year and it
would reduce the ranges effectively by 1/4 of a percentage point.
MS. TEETERS.
percentage point?

You mean it will reduce the target by 1/4

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's right. It would reduce the upper
end of the target by 1/4 percentage point.
MR. PARTEE.

Yes, it doesn't reduce the lower end.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's because the implication is that we
would come back within the channel.
MR. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, if I understand what you're saying,
it's what we originally thought about presenting to this Committee and
decided it was so complicated we couldn't explain it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. No, you took off on the midpoint, I think.
This is a little different.
MR. BLACK.

No, I'm not talking about what I said here.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Oh.

MR. BLACK. What we originally thought we would do in the way
of presenting charts is what you said, I think. I have some sympathy
for it, but we decided we couldn't explain it to the Committee.
But
maybe we can explain it to the public. The public could-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, there's nothing very hard about
explaining it to the Committee if it wasn't for that last step. And
what may make it impossible is that when you get finished with the
explanation, you have to say this isn't the right channel anyway.
That's really the problem; but any presentation has that problem.
That's what makes the whole presentation impossible.
MR. PARTEE.
shaded area added.

Maybe you could go into the second stage with a

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's right. We would have to put
another shaded area on here. That's exactly what-MR. MORRIS.

At least we could do it for M2 and M3, Paul.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, with M2 and M3 I don't think we can
do it because they're too far out of the target.
MR. BLACK.

What you have is a kinked two-year megaphone.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
SPEAKER(?).

That is it exactly.

Right.

But you can't do it, I don't think.

MR. CORRIGAN.

With a dogleg.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER Well, that's a problem, too. But that is a
presentational problem. If we presented it this way, we might end up
deciding--this would have to be a decision--that we'd be willing to
have a 1/4 point lower implied target for the M1s if we drew last
year's cone with the one-third/two-thirds distribution. Am I right
that if we do it 50/50, we're right on the cone?
MR. AXILROD. That's what I was just figuring out.
Yes, it
comes out that the rates of growth are exactly equal to the upper ends
of the ranges.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, without worrying about the
presentation--anybody can have second thoughts--the substance, however
it's presented, is that the majority opinion at least was that we
should be 1/2 percentage point lower on the M-1A and M-1B ranges.
Let's just look at that part of it first. Just what I would say, I'm
not quite sure. But my opinion is that we're going to be near the
upper end of whatever range we pick. That is, as I said, much more
likely than anything else.
In thinking about the ranges myself, I
don't consider that a problem. I don't consider that a miss in any
sense of the word and I assume that's what we're talking about. I'm
not saying we couldn't be at the lower end if things evolved in a
different way than the economic forecast suggests, with much lower
interest rates or whatever other permutations and combinations might
develop in the real world. I am simply saying that we would be

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satisfied to be around the upper end of the ranges with an economic
forecast of the kind presented. Let me just confine myself to M-1A
and M-1B. As I say, my concern is that that's too easy, not that it's
too tight. Do we have a consensus on that?
MR. PARTEE.

Do you want a show of hands or something?

MR. WALLICH. I am troubled by M-1A and M-1B and more
troubled by M2.
It's not that I want to speak up now, but in
combination it becomes very, very troublesome.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, we'll approach this by partial
differentials or something. I take it that people are willing to live
with that 1/2 point reduction on the M-1A and M-1B ranges, with
reservations depending about how we come out on the other parts and
how it all fits together. We recognize that in the end it might be
presented as on the right-hand side of that piece of paper, but
someplace it's going to be presented both ways, I'm sure. I don't
know whether we have to deliberate over the difference between M2 and
M3.
Let's assume that whatever we say for one applies to the other.
There I would feel even more strongly that we're more likely to be
flirting with the upper end than anyplace else and that the higher we
put the upper end, the higher in fact we might be, given the kinds of
problems that we foresee. How many do we have for 6 to 9 percent,
which is precisely where it was last year? I better just take a poll
of Committee members. Six. Who do we have for 7 to 10 percent? We
must have a couple in the middle. Well, I would encourage a moment of
discussion by somebody other than me--somebody who wants to be
persuasive one way or the other.
I would like to be persuasive on staying where
MR. SCHULTZ.
we were last year. It seems to me, given all of the uncertainties,
that we might as well get hung for a sheep as a goat here. This 1/2
percentage point doesn't seem to me to make that much difference, and
if we go up from last year, I think we're going to get a lot of
"Well, we're going to go down 1/2 point on
criticism. We will say:
"Aha! But you're going
M-1A and M-1B."
And they are going to say:
up on M2 and M3."
I just don't think it's that crucial; we are
looking at a whole family [of aggregates], which I think is important.
If we get outside the range on M2 and M3, that does exert some
additional discipline. Most people continue to [focus] on M-1B, and I
think that is the more crucial number; I don't think we help ourselves
very much by going to, say, 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent on M2 rather than 6
to 9 percent. We would lose a lot in the presentation. I do think
that the perceptions are crucial at this particular point in time,
just as I think the perceptions of budget-cutting are crucial in the
fiscal area. So, I would make an argument for 6 to 9 percent on M2
and 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent on M3, understanding that we're not only
going to be at the upper end but that the relationships may be such
I still think
that it's very difficult to stay below that upper end.
we're better off that way.
MR. PARTEE. The thing is that we were over [our M2 range by]
quite a bit this past year--by 0.8 percentage point if the figure is
right--and we're going to be over this year because, after all, we do
have within that aggregate two pretty dynamic competitive instruments:
the money market funds and the money market certificates. And the
MMCs have some potential for further development as a market tool.
I

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might also say that we're in the hands of the DIDC because it could
change rate relationships. Then who knows what might occur?
I rather
agree with you that it may not be worthwhile to confuse things. On
the other hand, I think this is the one time when we can say:
"Look,
we have the relationships wrong between these aggregates growth rates;
we had them wrong last year. We can't set each growth rate
independently because they have complicated relationships with each
other. Recognizing that and recognizing the close correspondence
between M2 and GNP, and seeing that people are thinking in terms of a
9-1/2 or 10 percent increase in nominal GNP this year, we think we
better have a range that would encompass what might occur. That's why
we have a higher range."
But I'm sympathetic with your point of view
that a 1/2 point difference isn't much.
MR. SCHULTZ.

And I'm sympathetic with your view, too.

MS. TEETERS. I'd take up on Ed's point. After all, we're
not only setting ranges for perception. A year from now we have to
figure out where we came in, and we ought to set something that we
have some chance of achieving. In a presentation of foreign targets
about two or three weeks ago, I noticed that the French did very well
but they had an 11 percent target.
I think it's better to be honest
and to say, as Chuck is saying, that we misspecified these. Then we
would have some chance to make it rather than put out a number that is
too low, knowing that we're not going to make it.
MR. WALLICH. Well, 6 to 9 percent in a longer-term context
is quite rich because we overshot the upper edge of the band by 0.8
percentage point, as someone said. That means we overshot the
midpoint by 2-1/4 percentage points. That makes 11-1/4 percent the
upper end, in effect, of the 6 to 9 percent. That's more than the
nominal GNP growth that the Board staff projects. I grant you that
anything can happen to M2. But there is going to be a temptation to
rely on that very heavily because of the uncertainties surrounding the
[narrower] aggregates.
It seems to me that this is just giving the
economy what it wants, like demand feeding. A more scholarly person,
Bob Black, said it was the real bills doctrine:
We just supply the
money that the nominal growth of GNP demands. We ought to have some
restraint built into this.
MR. GRAMLEY. May I take up on that point? The staff
forecast with the 7 to 10 percent range for M2 is for an increase in
nominal GNP of 9.6 percent and a decline in real GNP of .8 percent.
Now, I think it's a question of whether we want to aim as our central
point for -0.8 percent, or essentially -1.8 percent, for real GNP
growth in 1981. Both of those imply restraint. The question is not
whether we have restraint but how much. I too think, as Nancy said,
that inevitably we're going to be leaning more on M2 as the year goes
on to guide ourselves and to explain to the public what we're doing
because M2 is the one aggregate that's going to be most robust under
the kinds of institutional changes we're looking at.
If we can get
away with the presentational problem initially, I think we should go
up to 7 to 10 percent as a more meaningful number for M2 if we lower
the narrow aggregate ranges 1/2 point. We'll regret it later on if we
don't.
MR. WALLICH. But 7 to 10 percent really means 9 to 12
percent or a little more than that.

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MR. PARTEE. No, because we've already had the rest of it,
Henry. You assumed in your discussion that we properly specified it a
year [ago] and there's no reason to think we properly specified it.
We know it has a very close velocity correspondence to nominal GNP,
and it tracked it pretty well last year. It will track it again
pretty well this year.
MR. MORRIS. But the staff's forecast assumes the 8-1/2
percent midpoint. It seems to me, along with the Chairman's
suggestion, that the 9 percent ceiling would certainly be-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

The 9 percent encompasses the staff

forecast.
MS. TEETERS.
MR. PARTEE.

Just barely, by 0.2.
By 0.2.

MR. GRAMLEY. But that is assuming essentially no rise in
velocity. We could have a decline in M2 velocity for the year because
of what is happening to the MMCs and the money market mutual funds-the increased attractiveness of this particular aggregate relative to
market securities because of NOW accounts. There are all sorts of
reasons for thinking that might happen.
MS. TEETERS.

Tony is trying to suggest that we widen the

range.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. As I suggested, I would widen the
range by a point on each side, if we feel we can get away with it, in
order to look neutral.
If not, then I would have to come out for the
6 to 9 percent.
MR.
Maybe we can
margin. And
the possible

PARTEE. Well, I think 5 to 10 percent is too wide.
take 6 to 10 percent, but 5 points is an awfully wide
we don't really expect to be below 6 percent, not with
accounts in that [aggregate].

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. My experience with that Congressional
committee is that Fred Schultz is 100 percent right. What they're
going to say is:
"Look, you've lowered it a half point here and
you've raised it a half point there; if you average them together, you
haven't really done anything."
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

That's the problem.

MS. TEETERS. But we've known since last July that the
specification was wrong. If we have to change all these other
specifications as drastically as we do, we better get this one right.
Otherwise, we'll come up next year and say that we specified M2 wrong
for two years running and now we're going to confuse the waters by respecifying M2 in its proper relationship.
MR. CORRIGAN. I'm not entirely clear on this point that it
is fundamentally misspecified. I think the numbers that John Balles
was ticking off before work at least a little in that direction. Now,
it's probably true to say, given everything in M2 and the fact that
half of it is positively related to interest rates and the other half

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2/2-3/81

is negatively related to interest rates, that it should be more
stable. If anything, as I said before--although I really don't think
it's necessary to do it--that might suggest that the band can be
narrower and that we can more reasonably assume that it will come out
somewhere near what the staff forecast implies. But I'm not entirely
persuaded that it is structurally that far off the mark.
MR. GRAMLEY. If you take the past 10 years, the average
annual growth rate of narrow money is 6 percent; the average annual
growth rate of M2 is 9-3/4 percent.
Well, if we misspecified last time, why not

MR. WALLICH.
adjust both?

MR. CORRIGAN. But we've already corrected for it; we did all
these redefinitions and things. We built a lot of that right back in.
If you looked at it as you went along, you wouldn't find that.
MR. GRAMLEY. Not every year, no. It's awfully hard to argue
that this year we ought to see a substantially narrower range of
growth between M2 and the adjusted M1s.
MR. CORRIGAN. Well, if this NOW estimate that the staff is
But if the NOW estimate is a
making here is right, maybe that's true.
lot higher than that--i.e. more comes from savings-type instruments,
as Frank Morris suggests--then I think it works the other way.
MR. PARTEE.

It won't reduce M2.

MR. CORRIGAN.
MR. PARTEE.
MR. CORRIGAN.

No, but it will narrow the spread between--

Yes, it will raise M-1B.
Yes.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
what emphasis we put on the
part of the range. One way
narrow the range instead of
SPEAKER(?).

Well, what we do about this depends upon
fact that we expect to be in the upper
of approaching that, I suppose, is to
widening it.

Or not have a bottom.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Yes, or not have a bottom and just put
down a number. We could say we don't want to see it exceed thus and
so. But we could narrow it; I hate to have narrower ranges but I
don't think we're going to hit the bottom of this one anyway.
MS. TEETERS.

That's what we thought last year at this time,

too.
MR. MAYO. Paul, does the President's program, which
ostensibly is going to put money back in the hands of consumers who
are going to save it, give more credence to the continuation of a 10
percent figure?
MR. PARTEE.

Yes, he said half or more will be saved.

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MR. GRAMLEY. He said half to two-thirds will be saved.
We've got to accommodate that.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You know, I hadn't thought of that.
I
don't know whether we have any rationale that this great increase in
savings is going to push up-MR. MAYO. He's going to have a program by the time you go up
[to testify].
Do you agree with it or don't you agree with it? I
don't know.
MR. MORRIS.

It will be soaked up by the increased deficit.

MR. PARTEE.

It has one chance in 100 of being true.

MR. MAYO.

I'm afraid you're right, Frank.

MR. SCHULTZ.
Then it gets us in the awful box of indicating
that the FOMC agrees with that kind of number. We have some hard data
on it now. A recent survey that was taken indicated that 26 percent
of the people said they would save.
MS. TEETERS. They did that one time on a refund, too, and
every bit of it was spent.
MR. PARTEE.

Are they going to save anything?

MR. WALLICH.

Will we know?

MR. SCHULTZ.

Even that is a low number.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If you took this decade's relationship of
3 percent [as the differential between M1 and M2] and we're setting an
upper limit of 5-1/2 percent for M-1B, M2 comes out at 8-1/2 percent,
which is within the 6 to 9 percent range. I would not suggest a 6 to
9 percent range if we thought M2 growth was going to end up at 7-1/2
percent because that is in all likelihood considerably too low. My
problem is that I want this range to be a constraint on the up side.
MS. TEETERS. But the staff forecast is so close to 9 percent
already that it means we're going to start constraining almost
immediately.
MR. PARTEE. Well, if you think there's a really big
advantage--I don't think there is--I'm prepared to vote for 6 to 9
percent and assume we'll exceed it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, before we get there, let me ask a
question. If you had to guess, as a technical matter, between M2 and
M3 which is more likely to be exceeded?
MR. AXILROD. I do not have a good guess on that.
In the old
days, one would have said the broader aggregate. But now institutions
can compete actively in either aggregate. We have money market funds
in M2 as well as M3.
And we have money market certificates in M2.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The difference is basically negotiable CDs
and Eurodollars, [which are in M3], right?

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2/2-3/81

MR. AXILROD. That's right. And in both aggregates there are
[instruments] that institutions can offer aggressively or less
aggressively depending on conditions. Equally likely would be my
answer; I can't tell which.
MR. PARTEE.
MR. SCHULTZ.

Equally likely.
Or equally unlikely.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

Do you think you're splitting--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, they're already split. It's just a
question of how much they are split. The staff has M3 1/2 percentage
point higher. I don't know whether it's worth it, but we can
compromise the position by moving one down more than the other.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Then we would be forced to say
something about what we expect to happen because of large CDs.
MR. CORRIGAN. I think there is an argument--it's not a very
strong one--for saying that M3 might be the stronger, simply because
the prospects for a fair amount of term business borrowing are pretty
strong. When you look at the auto industry and the steel industry and
so forth, there's a lot of term big business lending going on. I
think banks are more likely to try to fund that with CDs. That is
compatible with some risk that M3 and bank credit could be toward the
high side, as I suggested earlier.
MS. TEETERS. Actually, we exceeded M2 by more than M3.
could put them both the same.
MR. CORRIGAN.

We

Well, last year we did.

MR. GRAMLEY. If we get a tax cut for business and it's
retroactive to the first of the year, it's going to provide businesses
with funds to finance their capital investment, and the mix of
borrowing will shift toward government.
MR. CORRIGAN. If they stay with the idea of accelerated
depreciation--I don't know if they will or not--the numbers I've seen
on cash flow on that in the first year, even if it's retroactive, are
pretty small because of the nature of the tax change.
It's not the
same as a change in income tax rates in terms of the cash flow effect.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think it will turn on the amount of bank
lending, but I'm a little hesitant to predict whether that's going to
be exceptionally big or small.
MR. SCHULTZ. It depends on what kind of budget cuts we get.
If the market looks at the budget cuts favorably, we could get a
situation in which corporations would be able to come to the capital
markets to a greater degree. And, boy, they would do it! They're
really sitting at the ready there.
VICE CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Going back to something that Fred
suggested earlier, we could have 6 to 9 percent now but say that given
the institutional changes it might very well be that in July we would
want to revise that on the up side.

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MS. TEETERS.

We're not notable for changing things in July.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Maybe we should change that; maybe we
should be a little more changeable in July.
MS. TEETERS. Chances are that the only way to change in July
is up and we'll go through the same argument about how awful it looks.
At this time of high inflation.

MR. PARTEE.

MS. TEETERS. Don't forget, we're going to have a firstquarter CPI number that's possibly going to scoop the markets right
out of their minds again. I think we're going to find it impossible
to raise our targets after we've had, say, a 16-1/2 percent increase
in the CPI in the first quarter.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I don't think any of us would be
arguing this so strongly if we didn't all have a feeling that we will
be focusing on this much more--that this is somewhat of a precursor to
the kinds of debates we're going to be having at all the meetings.
MR. PARTEE. Let me be a little picky about this. We could
have 6 to 9 percent now and then, assuming the tax cut takes effect
about midyear--and as a matter of fact the staff has a higher personal
saving rate for the second half than for the first half--we could then
say that because we have had the tax cut we want to make a little
allowance for that and we're going to raise the M2 range when we look
at it in July. It might be-MR. SCHULTZ.

We assume that it's going into savings.

MR. GRAMLEY. The easiest time to do it is right now in
expectation of that tax cut and to do it accompanied by a reduction in
the narrow money ranges.
MR. MAYO.
MR. PARTEE.
narrow money.

I think Lyle's right on that.
Because we're surely not going to be cutting

MR. GRAMLEY.
I think Mr. Mayo's argument is an excellent
one. It's a really good excuse. It's the best one, or the only one,
It's a stroke of genius. We have a tax cut coming
I can think of.
along and it's expected to add to savings; and we've made allowance
for it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
savings?

Any port in a storm!

MR. GRAMLEY. Certainly that's not inflationary, is it?
We're all for it.

More

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, my problem is this:
I think 10
It's higher than we had last year, and I assume
percent is too high.
we're going to be near the top. Now, one can say 9-1/2 percent is a
nice number, and in some ways it is a nice number. Is it worth it for
a 1/2 percentage point to present a higher target than last year?
That's my problem.

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2/2-3/81

MR. GUFFEY.
MR. MAYO.

The answer is no.
The answer is yes.

MS. TEETERS. But we have all these excuses for changing them
now, given the relationships.
MR. SCHULTZ.

Let's save them all up and use them later.

MR. GRAMLEY.

M2 has not received much focus.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. No, that's right; but I think it will
receive more and more after this.
MR. GRAMLEY. Over time it will. But I think we can sneak in
an increase in the M2 range now if we lean on the savings argument.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We're talking not only about M2 but also
M3. And in the popular view, we would be raising two out of the three
targets.
MR. SCHULTZ.

I don't think we can do that.

MR. AXILROD. Mr. Chairman, I don't know whether it's helpful
but, in answer to Governor Teeters's question, we looked back at last
year. The Committee essentially took what the staff had down for M2
It wasn't until midyear that the staff said the
and M3.
specifications were off.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Just because it's interesting, do you have
those numbers that Mr. Black was asking about earlier?
This is really
M1, but it's interesting. What page are those on in the Bluebook?
MR. AXILROD. Yes, they
numbers as we have them adjusted
for 1978, we have 7.8; for 1979,
have 8.0 for 1978; 6.9 for 1979;
1979 that reflects the shifts to
and ready adjustment for a sense
MR. MAYO.

are on page 5. I can read the
for the so-called shifts. For M-1A
For M-1B, we
6.5; and for 1980, 6.2.
Essentially for
and 6.7 for 1980.
ATS accounts and for 1978 some rough
of differences in trend of those two.

Wait a minute.

I didn't follow why you adjusted

1978.
MR. AXILROD. Well, it's a bit obscure as to whether one
should or shouldn't, so I wouldn't make too much of that.
MR. MAYO.

Okay.

MR. AXILROD.

It's much more clear in '79 and '80.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We didn't make much progress last year on
those numbers. We redistributed the progress that appears in the
unadjusted numbers. That doesn't change-MR. PARTEE.

It's really better.

I'd like--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it's pretty close. The weighted
average is a little better on the adjusted, about 0.1 better. Well,

2/2-3/81

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I
we have to make up our minds. We can try the 9-1/2 percent number.
think the real question is whether it's worth going to 9-1/2 percent,
which in some ways looks better; but it is going to show an increase
in two out of the three targets.
MR. PARTEE. How about leaving M3 at 9-1/2 percent? Have M2
and M3 the same at 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 or 7 and 10 percent, but leave them
the same on the grounds that we just don't know how they-I thought you just mentioned that S&Ls are
MR. SCHULTZ.
going to be selling CDs up to $100,000.
MR. PARTEE. They can certainly try unless there is a set of
questions about the solvency of the insurance corporations.
MR. RICE. Mr. Chairman, did you say two out of three of the
numbers would be higher?
I'm assuming
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If we go up [on M2 and M3].
at this point that we do with M3 anything we do with M2. When I say
two out of three, I'm assuming both the M1 ranges are essentially one
range. We could call it two out of four or two out of three. Well,
how many like 9-1/2 percent?
MR. GRAMLEY.

Better than what?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Better than 9 percent.

This is for what--M2?

MR. MORRIS.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MS. TEETERS.

For M2 and the equivalent number for M3.

Better than 9 percent, not preferable to 10

percent?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. RICE.

Better than 9;

that's right.

But not better than 10.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I understand. Not better than 10 percent
in some people's view. How does that leave me? How many prefer 9?
Seven and one. Well, the 9s clearly have it. That only leaves me
with the question of whether we can attract more support by fiddling
around here somehow. Let's assume we have 9 percent for M2, but not
do exactly the equivalent, which I was implicitly assuming, for M3.
Let me try 6 to 9 percent for M2 and 7 to 10 percent for M3.
MR. GRAMLEY. There really isn't a lot of usefulness in
having an M3 target that's higher than M2.
MR. SCHULTZ.

Yes, I think that's right.

MR. GRAMLEY. If the staff forecast is half right, over the
next year the growth of business loans is going to be held down
severely by the lack of inventory investment. That's in the
approximate sense the most important thing that affects business
loans. Without the business loans, the banks aren't going to borrow

2/2-3/81

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unless there's a very big difference between the prime rate and market
rates, and that's not very likely.
MR. ROOS. Mr. Chairman, for purposes of impacting the
economy, is it important that we specify an M3 range?
MS. TEETERS.
In a sense, basically that's a vote for a 1/2
point reduction in M1 and a full percentage point reduction in M2; and
if we do the cones we get another 1/4 point off on M1.
So, if you're
going to vote for 9 percent, you might as well take a full percentage
point off the M1 range. That's essentially what we are going to have
to do in order to keep within the target for M2 because our only
leverage is to push down on the M1s in order to retard M2.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MS. TEETERS.

I don't think that's right.

How are you going to get 1/2 point off M2?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it depends on whether you're looking
at the midpoint or not.
I'm not looking at the midpoint, frankly.
MR. PARTEE. No, Nancy means:
It went up 9.8 percent last
year, so why will it go up only 8.8 percent this year?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Now we're talking about moving the M2
figure from 6-3/4 percent, where it was on this adjusted basis?
MR. AXILROD.

Yes.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. --to 5-1/2 percent presumably if we're at
the top; it's down 1-1/4 percentage points.
MS. TEETERS. That would be moving it down. That's a full
percentage point. We're going from 6-3/4 to 6 percent--that's a 3/4
point reduction in M1--on the left side.
SPEAKER(?).

What is nominal GNP?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

About the same as M2, about 9.9 percent.

MR. SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I don't think we will accomplish
anything by tinkering with M3, by differing that relationship 1/2
percentage point.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
at all.
9-1/2

I'm not going to attract anybody else?

MR. SCHULTZ.
I don't think it holds together intellectually
If we fight the battle on the 6 to 9 percent, the 6-1/2 to

that means

[unintelligible].

I don't know why that should

please anybody particularly.
MS. TEETERS. Well, it doesn't hold together intellectually
now. If we're going to take a percentage point off M2, then the 1/2
point down on M1 isn't consistent.
MR. SCHULTZ.

I don't read it that way.

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2/2-3/81

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You're implying more accuracy in the staff
forecast than I think they can bear. Well, I think we ought to review
this anyway. It's very likely that we might want to have a review if
anything I consider really important happens that we don't know about
at this point. We'd do that some time before February 19th, but I
think we ought to have a tentative vote, which could be a final vote.
If I interpret this correctly, we are voting on what is essentially
alternative I for the M1s, presented however I deem appropriate at the
time it's presented. And consistent with those changes, 6 to 9
percent on M2 and 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 percent on M3.
On bank credit, Mr.
Corrigan reflected some suspicion; I don't think it's too important
whether we move that up 1/2 point or not. I don't know whether that
makes anybody happier or sadder. Is there any feeling about that one?
MR. AXILROD. I ought to point out that that's the one range
that was hit last year.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Well, we might as well leave it then.

MR. SCHULTZ.
I disagree with Mr. Corrigan's argument. My
heavens, the likelihood is that the great need in the economy will be
to reliquify. And any opportunity [corporations] get to go to the
credit markets and get out of the banks, they're going to try to take,
even at interest rates that are somewhat higher than they have been
historically. So, I would feel comfortable about that bank credit
number, Jerry.
MR. CORRIGAN.

I'm not uncomfortable with it.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. So, the proposal is to leave the M2, M3,
and bank credit ranges the same as last year and reduce the M1 ranges
by 1/2 percentage point, with a definite explanation in the
presentation that we expect to be near the top ends of the ranges on
the M2 and M3 numbers.
It would be encompassed in the explanation
that those ranges are biased or asymmetrical.
MS. TEETERS. Why don't we do like the British do and just
say we're going to exceed it?
MR. TRUMAN.

They didn't say that in advance.

MR. GUFFEY. Does that statement imply that we'll be looking
for the midpoint on M-1A and M-1B and the upper end on M2 [and M3] or
the upper end of the range on all four of them?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, in fact, we're probably going to be
near the upper end of the range on the narrow aggregates, too, but I'm
not sure I would state that quite so clearly.
MR. GRAMLEY. It seems to me that you could state your point
on M2 a little differently and say that if in fact we get a
significant volume of savings coming out of the tax reduction, it may
well be that M2 would go up.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'd be willing to say that, too, but
there's a difference in my mind. I think, in fact, that we probably
will be near the upper ends of the ranges on the M1s. But their
relationship with GNP is likely to be more erratic than the M2

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relationship, and I would just point that out. M2 does track [GNP]
more certainly; the velocity of M2 is probably a less uncertain animal
than the velocity of M1, and that would be the excuse for making the
statement. I would not exclude the possibility, certainly, that we'd
be near the upper ends of the ranges on the M1s.
MR. GUFFEY. For the [Congressional] committee's perception
or the public's perception we would be still looking at the midpoints
of M-1A and M-1B, although we may know around this table that it's not
too [likely].
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I would want to put some emphasis on the
fact that if we were near the upper end, that would be in no sense a
failure on M1.
There's a difference between it being in no sense at
all a failure if growth is at the upper end of the range and, in the
case of M2, having an expectation that growth is a little more likely
to be at the upper end of the range. That is the distinction I would
make. Is that proposition clear? If no one has any further
modifications to suggest, we might as well vote. The vote is subject
to possible reconsideration.
MR. ALTMANN.
Chairman Volcker
Governor Gramley
President Guffey
President Morris
not want to have any guideline for M1.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. MORRIS.
bank credit.

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes, with a proviso that I do

It will be noted.

I will accept the guidelines for M2, M3, and

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You're not going to dissent from the

decision?
MR. MORRIS.

No, can't we just have a footnote?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I would prefer to put it clearly in the
record that some people accepted it in general, but didn't like the
idea of a guideline [for M1].
MR. BLACK.

The Act requires it.

MR. ROOS. The record would state that others preferred to
target the M1s and forget about M2?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Altmann will reflect all these views.

MR. ALTMANN.
Governor Partee
Yes
Governor Rice
Yes
President Roos
Yes
Governor Schultz
Yes
Vice Chairman Solomon
Yes
Governor Teeters
Yes, if I get a proviso in the
opposite direction that I think the M2 range is unrealistic.

2/2-3/81

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MR. PARTEE.

You would prefer a higher upper limit for M2?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, there is no problem in reflecting
those views in the record, but they won't be associated with
individual names that way.
MR. ALTMANN.
No
Governor Wallich
Yes
President Winn
The vote is eleven for, one against.
I want you to know that if the Mafia comes
MR. SCHULTZ.
after me, I want you on my side!
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We're going to turn to the short-term
decision, and we'd better turn to the exchange markets and do that
part of our job. I don't know whether we can get these preliminaries
out of the way before lunch. It looks as if we will indeed run after
lunch unless you want a very late lunch. We might be able to finish
by 2:00 p.m.; I can't see us finishing before that. Would you rather
eat or try to finish by 2:00 p.m.?
UNANIMOUSLY.

Eat.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I understand what the relative priorities
in this group are! Mr. Pardee.
MR. PARDEE.
Appendix.]

I will try to be brief.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

[Statement--see

Comments or questions?

Is this the first time the Germans have
MS. TEETERS.
intervened in the dollar market?
MR. PARDEE. They've been intervening in bits and pieces all
along when the rate moved sharply. But they have made a decision that
they will act vigorously both in the exchange market and the money
market to counter the selling pressures, and I think the market has
sensed that. But we'll see how their follow-through is.
MR. BOEHNE. Have the Germans exported as much of their
unemployment as they can, as they used to?
MR. PARDEE. No, I'm afraid this time most of the
unemployment has [not] been exported. They didn't bring many people
back. These are Germans who are unemployed now.
MR. SCHULTZ. I thought Ezra Solomon had the best comment I
heard about that when he was talking about Switzerland. He said the
great advantage the Swiss have is that when they run their economy
into a brick wall they have a foreign employee in the front seat.
MR. PARDEE. The attitude of the Germans is that they can
send the women back into the kitchen.
MR. TRUMAN. They probably still have about 2 million foreign
workers in Germany, the more permanent ones.

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2/2-3/81

MR. MAYO.

Two million foreign workers still?

MR. TRUMAN. Around that or somewhat less than that.
The
peak in these numbers that I have here was 2-1/2 million in '73.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Any other comments?

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Well, normally I would be suggesting
that we at least raise the authorization because we only have $300
million left and it's a turbulent market.
But I think some
discussions are needed with the new team at the Treasury to get their
views.
I'm not quite sure of the legalities of this.
If we have that
discussion and they are sympathetic to our raising it, can that be
done by a telephone call?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It's only an informal limit, but
presumably we would need a telephone call.
It would take the
Committee's concurrence, but we haven't had a formal vote on this, if
I recall correctly. We'll get into this in a minute. Let me just see
if there are any other general comments or questions.
MR. WALLICH. There seems to be a market view that the dollar
can't fall and that that's why it's safe to take advantage of high
interest rates. Do you see that continuing at these levels?
MR. PARDEE. I don't know. The dollar dropped almost 2
percent today and almost 1 percent in 45 minutes; I think we may lose
that feeling very quickly. But, as I say, there has been this
euphoria and a very strong feeling that everything the Germans were
doing was wrong and everything we were doing was right.
These
attitudes can change very quickly.
MR. WALLICH.

Yes, they can change very quickly.

MR. PARDEE. It's a very, very psychological market we're
dealing with right now. It's very reminiscent of some of the things
that we've seen ourselves when the dollar was weak.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. The CPI in Germany went up what--a
full 1 percentage point last month? I think the wholesale index went
up 1.4 percentage point.
MR. PARDEE.

It was 1.4.

They're getting the vicious circle

element.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. The official forecast on the rate of
inflation is simply that it's going to go up to about 4-1/2 percent,
but the markets don't particularly believe it.
MR. WALLICH.

I've heard 6 percent, but not officially.

MR. PARDEE. Inside the Bundesbank they're talking about a 6
percent rate, but the official [forecast] is 4.5 percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Any other general questions or comments?
Well, we are within $300 million of [our informal] limit.
I would be
inclined to take a holding action and say--. Is that limit $1-1/2
billion or $2-1/2 billion?

2/2-3/81

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MR. ALTMANN.

$2-1/2 billion.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'd stick another quarter billion dollars
in there just to give us a little operating leeway. I don't know in
any definitive way how the new Administration will feel about the
Treasury's participation in this, but they haven't [expressed] any
objection to what we have been doing. They are informed, and they
haven't wanted to change it, presumably, at this stage. Whether they
will or not, I don't know. But they haven't yet and it may be useful
while we're meeting today to add another $250 million leeway. Let me
propose that. Do I take silence as acquiescence?
MR. PARTEE. Well, it seems hard to resist it when the rate
is 2.15 and I didn't vote against it when it was 1.90.
I didn't like
it at 1.90, but I really do think we are going to be a product of a
vicious circle here, too, if we don't watch out.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.
won't go back down.

We or the Germans?

"We" because we will find that the rate just

MR. WALLICH. Well, it's more of a Thatcher syndrome in that
we seem to be getting impatient that it isn't going down by the
virtuous circle that we ought to be getting. But we are getting a 10
percent reappreciation of the dollar and I wonder what is going to
happen to our exports here.
If you're indifferent, I would have
thought maybe a half billion dollars would be a better expression.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I said $250 million simply because,
without going very far, [we ought to] let the Treasury consider it at
some point.
MR. PARTEE.

We have $300 million leeway, is that right?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

We have $300 million now, so that's--

MR. PARTEE. So what we're really talking about is about a
half billion dollars in operating leeway.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It seems to me a reasonable operating
leeway, that's all.
If there are no objections, I will take that as
an increase in the informal limit of a minimal size simply to provide
operating leeway for the time being.
MS. TEETERS. Could I ask another question?
have plenty of dollars to intervene with?

Do the Germans

MR. PARDEE. Oh, yes. They have all those reserves they've
amassed over the years. And they've been picking up dollars from
SAMA. Every time SAMA wants marks, they go directly and-MS. TEETERS.

SAMA?

MR. SCHULTZ.

Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority.

MR. PARDEE. We've had the odd situation in which both
central banks were increasing their reserves at the same time over the

2/2-3/81

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last few months.
The Germans are very worried about the 30 billion
mark current account deficit they expect for this year and how much of
that they might finance out of their reserves. But they've been
amassing reserves, as I say, until today when they really hit the
market very heavily.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Does it show up as a reduction in
their domestic money supply when they intervene to support the DM?
MR. PARDEE. Today's operation, yes. But they're doing so
many other operations with the money supply that it's hard to say what
the net effect would be.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARDEE.
clear on this one.

Do you have any other recommendations?

I have no other recommendations now that we're

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

We have to ratify the transactions.

MR. WALLICH. Let me just mention something in response to
Tony's comment. I got a call from the Bundesbank in which they wanted
to stress that they had not changed their policy relating to the
provision of liquidity that you might have in mind as the counterpart
to the intervention. It had to do with the ending of an earlier
liquidity scheme of larger size; it was not to be understood as a
change in their policy.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Do I have a motion?

SPEAKER(?).

So moved.

SPEAKER(?).

Second.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Without objection. We'll go to Mr.
Sternlight who is going to have a short report before 1:00 p.m.
MR. STERNLIGHT.

[Statement--see Appendix.]

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Before I forget, maybe we ought to ratify
the transactions right now.
SPEAKER(?).

So moved.

SPEAKER(?).

Second.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Without
we going to have a lot of questions
five minutes and see whether we can
in that time. Who has a comment or
MR. SCHULTZ.
none at all!

objection, they are ratified. Are
on this? Who knows? Let's spend
dispose of comments or questions
question?

With that kind of entrance, you may get by with

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it was an interesting period. I
don't mean to shut off discussion. Is everybody satisfied? Well, we
will come back from lunch and have Mr. Axilrod present the short-range
targets. I wonder if we can get back here by, let's say, 1:40 p.m.

2/2-3/81

151-

[Lunch break]
MR. GRAMLEY. I have a poem [about] what could easily make it
all wrong:
Let's rely on the broader definitions
While eyeballing the level of rates
And pray that the economy does not suffer
The worst of all possible fates.
MR. SCHULTZ. What I don't understand is why you read that to
those of us who are here. You should have read it to the ones who
weren't here. Punish them!
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We have carefully observed, as I said
earlier, everybody's arrival time. Mr. Schultz was not among the
early ones! We've already made the decision, but I wanted to note
that this is Bob Mayo's last meeting and he has rendered valued
service through the years and we're [unintelligible].
MR. MAYO. The highlight of my career at this table was
summarized by Mr. Gramley in his inadvertent remark this morning that
I had made a remark that was that of a genius. And I'll go home with
that thought!
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I understand that you're going to be here
at the time of our next meeting--if not at the meeting, in the
surrounding area--and we will duly note the occasion. Mr. Axilrod.
MR. AXILROD.

[Statement--see Appendix.]

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Just to make sure we're clear. All these
numbers you're talking about are not real numbers. They're numbers
that exist in your head.
MR. AXILROD.

Well, they have a certain reality in that--

MR. SCHULTZ.

Insofar as your head does!

MR. AXILROD.

I won't give you my wife's comments on that!

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. But they are adjusted numbers, as best one
can adjust them from the estimates we have of the shift. The actual
numbers will look different from this.
MR. AXILROD. That's right. The actual numbers are charted
and are given in parentheses in the detailed tables on page 10 of the
Bluebook.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. But the actual numbers themselves rest
upon particular assumptions about shifts.
MR. AXILROD. That's right, assumptions about the amount of
shifts and the percentage of shifts. The assumptions are that in
February the amount of shift will be something on the order of $1-1/2
billion and in March about $750 million and that the percentage out of
demand deposits is something like 70 or 75 percent.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. We're obviously now in a difficult period
where assessments have to be made about the amount of shifting to
track these figures at all, so far as M1 is concerned. But apart from
that difficulty I suppose the question that is raised is one of
tactics. That is, are we relatively satisfied for a while with a
shortfall from the target that was just established in the interest of
a better possibility of hitting that target for the year as a whole in
whatever contour [emerges] in connection with tax cutting programs or
whatever. As with the economic projection, there is also, I would
think, some consideration of the fact that in the last two quarters we
overshot by a significant margin. And any undershoot from the annual
target has to be assessed not only in the light of what we want to do
next year but in the light of the overshoot in the most recent period.
MS. TEETERS. Which one of these alternatives is built into
the economic forecast?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, the economic forecast doesn't rest
on these quarterly figures that we have.
MR. KICHLINE. No, it doesn't. There just are no significant
differences in the first quarter that really matter. Our forecast is
built on the four-quarter path for the year.
MR. PARTEE. I think "C" would make a difference.
I don't
see much difference between "A" and "B," but "C" would imply
significantly higher interest rates in the short run.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I wonder a bit. Nobody knows about the
interest rate forecast associated with any of these numbers. There
seems to be some tendency for interest rates to decline during the
period when money supply growth on balance has been negative.
VICE
the fed funds
There is only
difference in

CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I'm surprised at the difference in
range between alternative "B" and alternative "C."
a 1-point difference, given a rather substantial
the target.

MR. AXILROD. Those are differences in [end] points.
I think
within the ranges we'd expect it to end somewhat differently. We
didn't really center these exactly; that is, in "A" the funds rate is
already at 17 or 17-1/2 percent and could go down a bit from there,
although we are a little skeptical about that. In "B" it looks to us
as if it could go up a bit, and in "C" we think it could go up much
more toward the top of that range.
So, those are just notional and
they weren't precisely centered.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, in accordance with our earlier
discussion, I think we should have a little discussion of what these
targets mean for where we're setting the operational nonborrowed
reserve target--or looked at the other way around, the immediate
figure on borrowings and in the light of any movement in these numbers
how we might react. With all that preliminary, would someone like to
say something?
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. Are we going to get the initial
borrowing assumptions that are compatible with these three
alternatives?

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, let's talk about the alternatives
first and then talk about the borrowing assumption.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. My initial feeling would be something
I think that to some extent we should accept the
between "B" and "C."
shortfall, but I don't think we now have to accept it completely. My
guess is that we would have a better chance of keeping interest rates
roughly constrained and not going any higher if we had something
between "B" and "C."
I think we are showing enough restraint, and
that would give us a little safety margin for later in the year.
MR. GRAMLEY. If I understand correctly what is in the
Bluebook on page 14, both "B" and "C" could likely result in some
And I
upward pressure on interest rates, though "C" more so than "B."
don't see why we would want to adopt an alternative at this point that
would result in upward pressure on interest rates, given the
anticipation that the monthly pattern of economic activity will be
weakening in the course of the first quarter.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The only problem with that is that I don't
believe that forecast; I have reservations.
MR. GRAMLEY. I'm not certain about it, but it's close to my
own prior view of where the economy is going to go in the first
quarter.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The interest rate forecast is derived from
some quarterly forecast, isn't it?
MR. KICHLINE.

It's a quarterly-average forecast.

MR. AXILROD. In essence what we're saying is that we'll have
a very substantial velocity [increase] in the first quarter on average
and that it looks as if that would require pressure on rates.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I understand that, but it seems to me that
whatever velocity increase we're going to get we've already gotten, so
to speak, if we look at monthly figures.
MR. AXILROD. Well, the only answer to that--it may not be
convincing--is that there's a lot of money that was in effect taken
out of the economy in December, so there's some sense that you have to
But [what is put back]
put that back on a month-by-month basis.
doesn't give us very much on a quarterly average, or as much as it
seems, because so much had been taken out in December.
MR. KICHLINE. In response to Governor Teeters's question,
the explicit path built into the forecast is 3 percent for the first
But in terms of economic
quarter, which is very close to "A" or "B."
effects, since we are constraining the forecast to 4-1/4 percent over
the whole year, if it's lower in the first quarter we assume that will
be made up later on so that we don't get substantial economic effects
for the year in total.
MR. PARTEE. Why is it, Steve, that the aggregate targets are
so [disparate]? Ordinarily when we look at alternatives "A," "B," and
"C," we see something close to an equal distance between them. And in

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this case the difference between "B" and "C" seems extraordinary,
particularly in view of the interest rate ranges.
MR. AXILROD. That's because what I did with alternative C,
Governor Partee, is to say that this is what the Committee adopted
last time from December-to-March, a 4-1/4 percent rate for M-1A.
MR. PARTEE.

Oh, I see.

MR. AXILROD. It's an option that says:
Forget about the
December shortfall and then just go ahead with that target. The base
fell rather radically. What alternative C in essence does is to
forget about that sharp drop in the base. The other two, in effect,
make up for the drop in the base, though not entirely because they're
based on the midquarter. But they get you back to the midpoint of the
longer-run range you adopted. Alternative C was just taking literally
the percentage increase, forgetting about the December shortfall and
asking:
Where does that leave you?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
basically.
MR. AXILROD.

Last time we did say 4-1/4 percent or less

Yes.

MR. GUFFEY. There's another explanation there, Steve, in
that alternative B relates to alternative II, which had the lower
ranges. We did not adopt those ranges. So you're talking about
something between "A" and "C," but not "B" as consistent with what we
adopted on the long run.
MR. AXILROD. Well, alternative A gets to the midpoint of the
ranges you've adopted. We constructed alternative B to be at the
midpoint of a tighter [set of ranges], and alternative C had the
rationale that I mentioned. But the Committee's decision today
doesn't have to be based on those rationales, of course; it could be
based on an idea that you might want to be short or not.
MR. GUFFEY. In response to Governor Partee, though, "A,"
"B," and "C" are not consistent numbers.
"B" relates to alternative
II, the tighter one.
MR. AXILROD. They had divergent rationales.
done in the usual way where here's a midpoint-MR. GUFFEY.

They weren't

Yes, right.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
Mr. Boehne.

Does anybody else have a suggestion here?

MR. BOEHNE. I find "C" too restrictive for my taste, given
the implications for higher interest rates.
I'd like to drag my heels
some, though, in terms of getting back to the path alternative A
implies.
So, that puts me in the neighborhood of "B."
But I agree
with Steve in that I don't think the Ms mean very much in this period.
They have some marginal value. So, I would have a federal funds range
of 15 to 20 percent in the directive, start the period about where the
funds rate is now, and if it looked as though the funds rate would

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have to go outside a 16 to 19 percent effective range, then I'd have a
consultation.
MS. TEETERS. But one of the problems we have here is that
those six months are when we're going to get the most fiscal
restraint; we will be getting the full impact of the windfall [from
lower prices on] oil plus the sharp increase in social security taxes.
If the tax cut comes through, it would seem to me that we'd want our
restraint more in the second half of the year than in the first half
when the economy is already headed down. I find the upper limits of
these ranges very unacceptable anyway. But given what we know is
going on, it seems to me that we should be somewhat looser during the
first half than we are in the second. That would lead me to
alternative A with a lower funds rate range, maybe 13 to 18 percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.

Who else?

I think I'd go for "B" just as it is.

MR. SCHULTZ
I think I would, too. But my feeling is that if
we do "B," a funds rate range of 14 to 20 percent rather than 15 to 21
percent is going to be more-MR. MAYO.

I agree with that.

MR. PARTEE. Well, I don't really have any way of judging
that, Fred. After all, we are going to be providing reserves on a
schedule for the market. It seems pretty close to an even position
right now; that is, we have a hint that there may be a decline but we
don't have much evidence. It could be reversed and in the meantime
prices are going to go up faster, so nominal GNP could be pretty
strong. I think there's about as much chance that the aggregates will
come in stronger than our path as that they will come in weaker, so
essentially it would be a fairly neutral option. With the funds rate
at 17-1/2 percent now, one could argue for 15 to 20 percent, as Ed
did. I wouldn't constrain it, though, with a telephone call because
we're only talking about a 2-1/2 percentage point move one way or the
other from where we now are.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Winn.

MR. WINN. In this wonderful world of exposition that we're
faced with, are you troubled by the imaginary targets that we're
setting out and then an imaginary short-term target that's above the
ranges that we prescribed? That seems to me to become a difficult
problem.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I worry about it literally.

MR. WINN. That's why I'd like to come in at least between
"B" and "C."
I'd put a restraint on the funds rate being over 20
percent instead of-MS. TEETERS. We're well below target at the present time.
We're well outside of the range.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. You say we're well outside of the range.
Where are you measuring it from? We were too high in the fourth
quarter; we now look a little low only because December was low.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
MS. TEETERS.

January is showing good growth.

Depending upon your assumption about the

shifts.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Corrigan.

MR. CORRIGAN. I am comfortable with "B" or something
slightly less than "B."
But I have one question to Mr. Axilrod. When
you construct the nonborrowed reserve path, you effectively will have
to do that off the numbers in parentheses in Table 10, right?
MR. AXILROD.

That's right.

MR. CORRIGAN. So, no matter what we pick in terms of a path,
the pressures on the funds rate that we will see or not see in this
interval may be more directly a function of the accuracy of these
estimates than anything else.
MR. AXILROD. Well, when the estimates turn out to be wrong,
as they did of course after December, some of the degree of error
ought to be compensated for by multiplier adjustments so to speak.
That is, if there is a lot more money coming from savings accounts
into NOW accounts, which have higher reserve requirements, we should
be adjusting the path for that so that we don't get inadvertent
tightening and vice-versa.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think we have any alternative but
to rely upon whatever estimates and changing estimates the staff may
make as we go along. I don't have great faith in their estimates, but
I wouldn't have any more faith in any estimates that we try to make up
here. I think we're just stuck with that.
It may make us a little
more sensitive to wide gyrations in interest rates; we may at least
want to use that to a small extent as an indicator. Governor Wallich.
MR. WALLICH.

I'd like to start the year off right.

MR. SCHULTZ.

[Unintelligible].

Now we're going to get

"D!"

MR. WALLICH. No, I just don't want to exceed our targets
with an early set [of ranges that are above them], so I'd like to come
in a little lower than "B."
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER(?).

A little lower than "B"?

MR. WALLICH. Yes, somewhere between "B" and "C" in other
words, but with 16 to 22 percent [on the funds range].
I'm asking a
great deal.
MS. TEETERS.

Just a floor.

MR. WALLICH.

"B" to "C" or sort of "B minus."

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Guffey.

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MR. GUFFEY. I would join those who prefer something between
"B" and "C."
The problem is complicated as far as I can see because
of the very sharp one-month drop in money growth in December. It
rebounded in January and we had about 6-1/2 percent growth, which is
above the long-run target that we just established for 1981. If you
look at "A," for example, the money growth that we would have to have
on a monthly basis to get back to our 4-1/4 percent growth by the end
It
of March involves very large figures. The same is true of "B."
[My prescription]
seems to me that we shouldn't [go that fast].
represents what we have done in the past; we've tried to [make up]
about one-third of the [way each month, taking three months] to get
back to the midpoint. I would suggest that we get back to the
midpoint by April or sometime beyond.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I suspect in this connection that you have
worked out here someplace--these are monthly figures on page 9--what
the implied quarterly average is?
MR. AXILROD. Well, they're all relatively low.
numbers are in the table on page 10 on the bottom line.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.

Those

Right, they are low.

Because of the profile.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That's right; it's because of December
being low. What we might do is think of it as an average of those two
figures.
MR. AXILROD.

That would be a better way to look at it.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. That works out fine.
[Unintelligible] the
average is high, and if you look at the quarterly figure, it is low.
MR. GUFFEY. Well, just to conclude, I have one other point.
If we were to adopt "A," for example, or even "B," we would get back
close to the midpoint by the end of March. And if we're going to hit
the targets we've established for 1981, then we'd have to drop the
monthly growth rate of around 6 to 8 percent--8 percent under "A"-back to 4 or 4-1/4 percent. That would really be putting on the
brakes again at the start of the second quarter.
It makes more sense
to me to take another month or so to get back to the midpoint rather
than to try to reach it by March as represented by "A" or "B."
So,
I'd favor someplace between "B" and "C," with the federal funds rate
probably in a range of 15 to 20 percent. I agree with some of the
comments around the table in that I have little confidence in the
interest rate projections in the Bluebook.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. GUFFEY.

Are you suggesting a funds rate range?

15 to 20 percent.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

15 to 20 percent.

MR. PARTEE. That rule of one-third [of the divergence] a
month for three months, which we did discuss at some length yesterday,
is a very reasonable point, Roger. What would that mean in terms of
getting back, Steve? Have you figured it out? You'd have to take a

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little off February and March, I presume, on alternative B.
On
alternative A you'd have to take a little off because "A" gets us back
to the midpoint, right?
MR. AXILROD.

"A" got back to the midpoint within 3 months.

MR. GUFFEY.

Taking January [M-1B growth] at 6-1/2 percent.

MR. PARTEE.
[procedure], though.

We wouldn't want to think of that as a regular

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. MORRIS.

Who else?

Mr. Morris.

I'd buy going between "A" and "B."

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Between "A" and "B"?

MR. MORRIS.
I mean between "B" and "C," as Roger indicated,
with a funds range of 15 to 20 percent. With the economy softening, I
don't think it would be suitable at this stage to indicate that we are
moving the interest rate range up. The only number I understand in
that is the M2 number. Assuming the economy cooperates with us, which
I don't think it will, that would mean 8 percent on M2, which is not
bad given the range.
MS. TEETERS.
MR. MORRIS.

15 to 20 percent.

MS. TEETERS.
MR. MAYO.
MR. MORRIS.
any change.

What is the funds rate range now?

15 percent with no top.

The top is 20 percent.
It's 15 to 20 percent, so we wouldn't be making

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Who else?

Mr. Balles or Mr. Mayo.

MR. BALLES. Just a quick question, if I may, to help me make
up my mind. This is a question to the staff, Steve. Have you seen,
or do you have any opinion about, the assertions in the financial
press by some commentators and money watchers that the December drop
was not a real drop--that financial institutions were misreporting to
us? The [alleged] scenario is that both banks and S&Ls were getting
cranked up to issue NOW accounts, which weren't legal until the first
of the year, and were making moves internally to take things out of
savings accounts but hadn't yet classified them as NOW accounts and
were calling them in reports to us "other liabilities."
I don't know
whether that has any merit in reality. I'm asking you.
MR. AXILROD. Yes, I have heard of that.
I don't believe we
have noticed any substantial increase or change in the other
liabilities category, but I haven't inspected that personally. We
have not found any real evidence of something like that going on. But
[money supply] behavior in the last two weeks of December and the
first week of January was rather odd; my inclination has been to throw
those three weeks out and start [comparing] recent weeks of January

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with where we were because they did drop sharply and then rose
sharply. There was a very big increase in M-1A after adjustments.
MR. BALLES.
I thought you might have had a chance to look at
the trend of the so-called other liabilities that came in.
MR. AXILROD. No, I just can't answer that directly. We
didn't find anything, but there is this peculiarity of the deposit
data that we think is just a bad seasonal. But we have to look
elsewhere.
MR. BALLES. Well, with that uncertainty, I guess I would
come out where several others have already, between "B" and "C."
MR. GRAMLEY. When people say between "B" and "C,"
such a large gap between them--

there is

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let's get to that at the next stage.
you have a federal funds opinion, Mr. Balles?
MR. BALLES.

Do

15 to 21 percent.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Mayo.

MR. MAYO. Well, since I'm the oldest person around the
table, I'll brag that some 50 years ago I learned for the first time
that the square root of -1 is an imaginary number. It was only when I
arrived at this table that I really learned what imaginary numbers are
all about! I think we should repeat our humility that we really don't
know what we are doing on any of these alternatives and that the best
we can do is to take the staff's very loose translation here and play
with it, granting that by next week there may be a different set of
numbers. I think we have to do that in this particular intermeeting
period; our only refuge is really the way the federal funds rate
behaves regardless of how much bowing and scraping we do about the
aggregates. Having said that, I come out also shading "B" toward "C."
Just to start that discussion going, I'd say 5-1/2 percent for M-1A
and/or M-1B, 8 percent for M2, and 14 to 20 percent for federal funds.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. In all this talk, which I share, that we
can't interpret these figures with precision, let us not forget that
we can't interpret them with precision even when the numbers are not
distorted. We have a plus or minus 10 percent error anyway, so we are
only slightly worse off in some sense than we ordinarily are.
MR. MAYO. Well, we could vote on whether we are 10 percent
or 20 percent worse off! That would be further expression-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Black.

MR. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I would favor "B."
That's the
alternative that would have gotten us to the midpoint of alternative
II, which I favored. Since the Committee voted for alternative I, I
wouldn't want to go quite to the midpoint of that. So I'd stick with
"B."
And I think there's a great deal of merit to keeping that
federal funds ceiling at 20 percent.
I haven't much sympathy with
ceilings but I don't think this is the time to raise it.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Mr. Roos.

MR. ROOS.
I would lean toward either alternative A or
alternative B.
I don't feel strongly enough that I would be
passionately opposed to "C."
But we should remember the experience we
had in the early part of last year when we permitted the aggregates to
drop from a rather high rate of growth down to a significantly lower
rate of growth. We had M-1B growth over the second half of last year
of something like--I don't know exactly--12 to 14 percent, and we are
jamming it down even with alternative A to a significantly lower rate.
In my way of analyzing the effects of changes in the growth of the
aggregates, I am impressed by research that we've done that shows that
when we have an abrupt drop in the rate of money growth from a higher
pace to a lower pace and hold it there, that does have a very negative
effect on output and can precipitate a recession. And it usually
I think we should really try to avoid unseemly fluctuations in
does.
these aggregates. I would intellectually lean toward the less
restrictive of "A" or "B," but I wouldn't go to the mat on any of
these three alternatives.
I do feel that the fed funds rate range,
short of this Committee overwhelmingly going to a broad range of 1 to
20 percent, should be as broad as possible. I'd opt for 14 to 20
percent to keep it broad.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Governor Rice.

MR. RICE.
I would go with alternative B. That alternative
seems to be fairly consistent with the longer-range targets that we
adopted, which came out to be someplace in between alternatives I and
II.
Alternative B promises to get us back to the midpoint of
alternative II by March. So, I would go along with "B" and a federal
funds range of 14 to 20 percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Who are we missing?

Mr. Ford.

MR. FORD.
I'd go with "B" and keeping the fed funds rate in
a range of 14 to 20 percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Who else is missing?

Mr. Boykin.

MR. BOYKIN. I would go with "B" with the fed funds range
shaded to 15 to 20 percent.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
not count?
MR. SCHULTZ.

Somebody else is missing here.

Whom did I

Yes, I said what I wanted.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

I guess that's right; I don't have

[Mr.

Gramley].
MR. GRAMLEY. I would go with "B."
I would be willing to
live with some shading on the down side of "B," if that's the way
others vote. I wouldn't push interest rates down deliberately to get
numbers as high as "B," if they came in below that. But I wouldn't
like to see interest rates go up in an effort to try to squeeze the
growth rate down much below "B."
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Where are you on the federal funds range?

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2/2-3/81

MR. GRAMLEY.

The 15 to 21 percent range is all right.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. For the very reasons Roger suggested--and
also because of the fact that we were high for about 5 months, not
[just] the last 2 months--if I look at the quarterly averages, I'm not
the least bit concerned about having a low quarter on a monthly
average basis. I don't think we want declines in the money supply as
we look ahead. We know we don't have all that close control over
these things, but it would concern me if the money supply began moving
into the kind of fall that it did last year, and I think we ought to
respond to that. Short of that, I don't think we have much to worry
about in the short run. On the federal funds rate range, a majority
of the Committee wants a top limit of 20 percent or below, and that's
true of almost all the participants not on the Committee. I would
propose that we not put the federal funds rate range above 20 percent.
[Views on] the bottom are scattered around 14 and 15 percent. I'm not
sure that's too terribly vital at this point. The range is 15 to 20
percent now. I suppose absolutely the most neutral thing to do is to
leave it where it is. We are right in the middle of that range now.
I share the view that some place between "B" and "C" is
right. I share the instinct that Governor Gramley just expressed in
that I wouldn't want to make a great effort to get down as low as "C"
or below "B," if that took a lot of effort. But I would not be very
disturbed if it goes there without any effort. This all bears upon
where we put the borrowing number. We have to put some numbers down
here. I wonder whether they shouldn't be expressed as a quarterly
average. What have we been doing recently? Have we been expressing
them as quarterly averages or--?
MR. PARTEE.
quarterly averages.

They are December-to-March, for example, but not

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. The reason that occurred to me is that
some of these numbers sound rather high to put down as a target when
we just adopted a long-range target [with an upper limit of] 5-1/2
percent. If we suddenly put down a number that says we are starting
off fresh out of the box with 6-1/2 percent, even though we can
rationalize it, I don't know how many readers are going to be
rationalizing it.
MR. MAYO.

Well, that's one reason for using 5-1/2 percent.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
5-1/2 percent?
MR. WALLICH.

3 to

3 to 5-1/2 percent.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. WALLICH.

What is the target we just adopted:

For M-1B?

No, that's 3-1/2 to 6 percent.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
5-1/2 percent for M-1A.

It's 3-1/2 to 6 percent for M-1B and 3 to

MR. MAYO. Why don't we use 5-1/2 or 6 percent? It's the
cowardly way out perhaps, but it isn't too far from the best analysis
of our staff.

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2/2-3/81

MR. WALLICH.
MR. ROOS.

That would suit me.

What are we talking about right now?

I'm lost.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, it's a round number. It's going to
be either 5-1/2 or 6 percent, I guess, or we can say roughly 5 to 6
percent if we want to indicate a little less precision. One thing for
sure:
We won't be between 5 and 6 if we say 5 to 6 percent for a
2-month period.
MR. MORRIS.

Nobody will ever know what the number is, Paul.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Nobody will ever know what the number is

anyway.
MR. MAYO.

Is this December-to-March now?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
numbers, yes.

I'm looking at the December-to-March

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. But in drawing up the reserve
numbers, the staff needs a little [narrower] guideline I would think.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I suppose if we say 5 to 6 percent,
they will assume 5-1/2 percent.
MR. GUFFEY.

Is that for M-1B?

MR. PARTEE.

5 to 6 percent for what?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, both of these numbers are the same.
So what I'm talking about are both the M1 numbers.
MR. PARTEE.

Both of them?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.

They're both the same now.

Oh, I see.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

point

They're not the same in "C."

MS. TEETERS.
["A" and] "B"
[difference] in the numbers.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. AXILROD.
MR. MAYO.

[don't have] a half percentage

Why is that?

Oh, don't ask.

We've worn Steve out!

MR. AXILROD. That's explained in some footnote, which I
think is accurate.
It has to do with where the month of December
ended up relative to the quarterly average. We constructed the path
going from the quarterly average to March, but December's numbers for
M-1A and M-1B were divergent relative to where they were on the
quarterly average.
MR. SCHULTZ.

You were right about don't ask!

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2/2-3/81

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
is different from M-1A?

What's your explanation of why in "C" M-1B

MR. AXILROD. There we just started out in December and went
ahead with the normal divergence between M-1A and M-1B.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. AXILROD.
SPEAKER(?).
MR. AXILROD.

But why isn't it the same for the others?

Because we-Don't ask.
I would gladly explain it to you after the

meeting.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think we are at a level of detail that
isn't going to be significant.
MS. TEETERS. Steve, am I correct that if we go for anything
less than "B," then total reserves will decline over the quarter?
MR. AXILROD. I think that's what we have, but that's
somewhat an artifact of how the averages for the weeks with lagged
reserve accounting worked out. Over the next 2 months it's lower.
MS. TEETERS. And if we went closer to "C," we'd have a
rather sharp decline in total reserves?
MR. AXILROD.
exact number at hand.

There would be a decline.

I don't have the

MR. MORRIS. That's a decline related to the hypothetical
numbers, though. The actual reserve numbers would be growing,
reflecting a shift out of savings accounts into NOWs. If we get a
large part of [the estimated shift from savings accounts], that's a
lot of reserves: from nothing to 12 percent.
MS. TEETERS.

Yes, but this is a total reserves base.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't know on what basis it is.
That's what Frank is questioning. Is that a hypothetical reserve
figure?
MR. AXILROD. No, that's a real reserve figure. Reserves
decline 3 percent allegedly under alternative C, assuming all the
shifts are as we estimated. I don't think what happens to reserves,
of course, is as important as what happens to the money. That takes
account of lagged reserve accounting, which can make for a certain
artificiality.
MR. SCHULTZ. It does affect the borrowings, though.
you going to decide on what the borrowings are?

How are

MR. AXILROD. We suggest for alternative B something like
$1.5 billion, which turns out to be very close to where borrowing is
running this week.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

You think it has to be that high?

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MR. AXILROD. Borrowing in the week of January 28 was $1.8
billion. In the week of January 21, it was $1.4 billion; and in the
week of the 14th, it was $1.3 billion. It has been rising recently
and the funds rate has been dropping. The funds rate dropped off this
week.
MR. STERNLIGHT.

It's about $1,350 million so far this week.

MR. AXILROD. And the funds rate is about 17-1/2 percent.
So, we'd say $1.5 billion or perhaps a little less. We're somewhat
uncertain.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If anything, we have had a slightly
declining trend in the money supply since the first week of January.
Why would we be increasing the borrowing?
MR. SCHULTZ.

Nonborrowed reserves are coming down fairly

rapidly.
MR. AXILROD. Well, it looked as if there was a sharp drop in
the demand for borrowing in December. So, borrowing was low and the
funds rate was a lot higher than it is now--19 to 20 percent. That's
what we generally thought was an oddity. More recently it appeared
that what one might have thought of as "normal" relationships were
being reestablished. But they're being reestablished with borrowing
going up and the funds rate dropping. This really reflects the fact
that we don't think what we had in early January reflects, in essence,
banks' demand for borrowing at the funds rate we've projected here,
which in fact under alternative B--assuming the economy doesn't
collapse under foot--is a somewhat higher funds rate than we now have.
If the Committee believes that the funds rate should be lower either
way, then I would certainly suggest to the Committee that it take a
lower borrowing level.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't know where the funds rate
should be. But just looking at the last few weeks, the tendency is
for the money supply to decline with our current level of borrowing,
and I would think the natural thing to have, until you have shown us
differently, is a somewhat lower level of borrowing.
MS. TEETERS.

That would say we reduced borrowing and total

reserves.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I don't know what the total reserves
have to do with the money supply.
MS. TEETERS.

You don't think it's [unintelligible]?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. PARTEE.

It's increasing nonborrowed reserves.

What's the borrowing figure with "A"?

MR. AXILROD. In "A" we had it closer to what it had been
recently, more like $1-1/4 billion.
MR. PARTEE.
for "B."

It's $1-1/4 billion for "A" and $1-1/2 billion

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MR. AXILROD. Given recent experience, if borrowing in the
last two weeks is anywhere near what bank demands for borrowing are,
that would suggest that $1-1/4 billion would perhaps lead to a drop in
the funds rate--one can't be all that certain--from around the current
level. We had made that more consistent with "A," where we thought
the odds on a drop in interest rates were greater but not with "B,"
where we thought the odds were less that interest rates would drop.
MR. ROOS. Mr. Chairman, I sensed yesterday in our discussion
that the one improvement in our operating procedures that we were
willing to sign off on, as of that time, was to move our nonborrowed
reserve path more frequently to follow any changes in the borrowing
level. If we do that, it seems to me that it's less important that
our borrowing assumption be totally accurate. If we do what I think
we said yesterday we were going to do, this will be adjusted
frequently. So, I'd like to suggest specifically--I hope I'm not
moving too quickly into the directive but I think it's terribly
important that we write this into our procedure because this is
germane to what we are talking about--that we put a sentence in at the
end of the paragraph of the draft directive shown on page 17 that
"The Committee assumes that member
would read something like this:
bank borrowings will average ___"

(fill in whatever we assume during

whatever period we use) "and instructs the Manager to adjust the
nonborrowed reserve path appropriately and promptly if borrowings
Putting that in the directive gives us
deviate from this assumption."
what I think we agreed yesterday would be a procedural change in our
operating techniques. It makes it an unmistakable reflection of what
the Committee said yesterday it was seeking to do. And it puts
flexibility into this borrowing assumption exercise and really makes
the initial borrowing assumption less important because we can adjust
on a day-to-day or every-other-day basis if our borrowing assumption
proves to be a mistaken one.
MR. WALLICH. Would you bring it back to where we had it
originally by changing the path or would you drive it up or down by
changing the path?
MR. ROOS. We would assume that it's impossible to anticipate
what borrowings would be. Borrowings will occur due to forces not
directly under our control. We would merely adjust the nonborrowed
reserve path to what happens from moment-to-moment or day-to-day in
the totals of member bank borrowing so that we don't try to anticipate
or estimate what number to plug in.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think it works that way, Larry.
Your basic idea, I think, may be useful. I'm not sure we could write
the language here. The borrowings aren't totally predictable, but for
the most part we make them what they are. The real question that
arises is what we do with the nonborrowed reserve path when the money
supply deviates and therefore generates--if we don't change the path-a difference in borrowing. But it's not exactly unanticipated; it's
anticipated. What we want to end up doing in those conditions is that
if the money supply is high, we'd reduce the nonborrowed reserves and
increase the borrowings still further, not the reverse.
MR. WALLICH. If we vary the path merely enough to drive the
banks back to the same level of borrowing, we are coming close to
pegging the funds rate, which surely isn't what you have in mind.

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MR. PARTEE. We adjust the total reserves. That is, if
borrowing goes high, we cut nonborrowed in order to keep the total-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
We'd have to-MR. PARTEE.

But that's not what that language says.

That's what he means.

MR. ROOS. Well, that's what I mean to try to achieve--a
total reserves result consistent with what we want to do and, of
course, it implies a-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think the language would have to read
that if total reserves went off after all our multiplier adjustments
and all the rest, we would increase the borrowings, not bring them
back to the initial level.
MR. ROOS. Yes, that might be a better way of stating it.
But the principle, I feel, is important.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. I think it's a mistake to lock
ourselves in too precisely in terms of the directive. For example, we
have never spelled out in the directive the initial borrowing
assumption, even though I know Peter Sternlight would like it. There
are problems if we try to lock this in. We can and have instructed
the Desk that it's the sense of the Committee that we want a prompter
adjustment in the nonborrowed reserve path if we begin to see misses;
but I don't know of any parameter we can give for a specific concrete
instruction on that. It's still going to be judgmental.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Maybe we can work on this for the next
meeting. I don't think the language that Larry has is technically
accurate, but maybe we can get some sense of this for next time. I
suspect we will be here all afternoon if we try to do it today.
MR. WALLICH. If we simply said "shall vary the path in such
a manner that total reserves are kept on track"-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

That's a little strong.

MR. WALLICH. It's perhaps a little strong, but the point is
that borrowed reserves would be varied from their original-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. What it says now is:
"In the short run,
the Committee seeks behavior of reserve aggregates consistent with
growth..." We could say:
"In the short run, the Committee seeks
behavior of reserve aggregates...and shall so adjust the provision of
nonborrowed reserves consistent with growth..."
MR. ROOS. I think there is a certain urgency to it because I
honestly believe there's a great deal of anticipation and interest in
what the FOMC will choose to do with the study that was conducted. We
sort of put in abeyance many of the proposals or the options that
Steve's study highlighted. But one that we didn't was this. If we
don't come up with something, I think we can be accused rightfully of,
[despite] the study, still conducting our business in the same way
that caused us to miss our targets last year. Again, the big trick is
not just choosing targets but accomplishing them in the year 1981.

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, we will say something about that in
the testimony, which will be out before the directive is out.
MR. GRAMLEY. It seems to me that in the world of uncertainty
in which we are living--with this very, very rapid transition from
demand deposits and other accounts to NOWs--the worst thing in the
world we can do is to tell the Manager and other staff to speed up
this adjustment process to uncertain numbers. Let's wait until the
end of the month and take a look at it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I would suggest we defer this in terms of
the directive. It may be a reasonable suggestion, but we will have to
mention something about this in the testimony.
MR. SCHULTZ.
credit controls!

We'll just blame it on the guy who ran the

MR. GUFFEY. I don't mean to resurrect yesterday's discussion
but it seemed to me that we did assume yesterday that there would be
more rapid adjustments in the nonborrowed path. I'd like to go on
record as saying that I don't happen to agree with that; I think
that's what Lyle was talking about.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. There certainly was some difference of
opinion expressed yesterday, but I think the weight, at least in terms
of a majority opinion, was that we would be looking at that with a
great deal of sensitivity.
MR. GUFFEY. A majority opinion, yes.
register [my disagreement with that].
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER
as I understood it.

I just want to

It wasn't any powerful unanimous accolade,

MS. TEETERS. Steve, if you locked in on the volume of
borrowing, wouldn't your multiplier go all over the map?
MR. AXILROD. If we held the level of borrowing, all the
studies suggest we would get further off path than if we varied it.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. What we are talking about now is in which
direction the risk is with regard to where the money supply will go.
And nobody knows very well. My sense of it is, compared to your $1.5
billion, that [borrowing] has been declining a little. It's possible
the economy is declining. Without being very fancy about it, I guess
I would take the risk more on reducing the volume of borrowing from
the figure you suggested than raising it from the current level, which
[I say that] just as a
is what is involved in your suggestion.
starting point. If we get a week or two of high money supply figures,
then obviously, consistent with everything we have been saying, we
would change it in one direction or another.
MR. ROOS. Paul, how would you respond to the question: What
is going to be done differently this year than last year? You said
that, hopefully, your testimony will touch on that. The public, or at
least interested people, do know that we've had this study. And the
study was an excellent one. How do you respond?

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, I think the primary point, and what
I will try to list in the testimony, is what came out of the study.
But in this sense, it seems to me the most important thing that came
out of the study is that the present technique wasn't that bad.
MR. ROOS. Well--and I say this with the greatest respect for
all of you--if any of us tries to say that last year's performance was
satisfactory, I would just have to disagree totally. I think an awful
lot of people would disagree.
MR. SCHULTZ. Larry, I think the answer to your question is
that we're not going to have credit controls in 1981.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Well, there are other things, too. I get
this [criticism] all the time, of course, most specifically from the
current Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee. I'm just
using him as an example because of his institutional position. He is
in a mood where he says: "I don't give a damn where those money supply
figures go, but you have too much volatility in interest rates." Now,
that is one source of criticism. Everybody can unite on criticizing
us on volatility. One group comes at it from the standpoint of
instability in the money supply and another group comes at it from
instability in interest rates. One of the things that came out of the
study--I don't know whether the study was all this strong on this
point but I'd love to make it this strong--was that you can't have it
both ways, boys. You can criticize us for one or the other, but not
both. Now, we know what the particularly monetarist oriented people
are talking about. Mr. Garn has put it quite clearly, saying:
"I'm
sick and tired of all that monetarist business. I don't like these
fluctuations in interest rates." That's a-MR. FORD. I think the volatility issue will be less of a
problem for us if we don't have credit controls again. The last time
[the funds rate] went from 16 to 6 percent from top to bottom and then
from 6 to 21 percent. So, from peak to trough to peak, we had a 25-VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
stagnantly stable economy!

Also, we're going to have a nice

SPEAKER(?).

Yes.

MR. PARTEE.

There's also a 10 percent--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I have a lot of sympathy for what you're
saying, Larry, because I've got to answer the questions. But I don't
want to get out of one box and we say we're doing things differently
for the sake of doing things differently and then find out that we're
in another box.
MR. ROOS. But I would hate, when I'm on my wedding bed and
we're awfully close to making changes that we've been seeking for
years and years, just to be lulled into sleep. That's a bad-MR. MAYO. Larry, I'm really going to miss the Open Market
Committee meetings!
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I could think of quite a few responses to
that, Larry, from which I will refrain!

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I think you'd be better send him up to testify!

MR. GRAMLEY.

You've put a totally new light on our

MR. SCHULTZ.
procedures!

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. May I return to our operational decision?
Steve put forward the hypothesis of $1-1/2 billion of borrowing to
start with. I tell you, that makes me a little nervous as I see the
probabilities. But it's anybody's guess in practice, I suppose.
MR. MORRIS(?).
MR. PARTEE.
MR. AXILROD.

Make it $1-1/4 billion.

Was it $1.3 billion last week, did you say?
Last week it was higher; it was $1.7 to $1.8

billion.
MR. STERNLIGHT.
MR. PARTEE.
was low and--

But this week so far it's $1.35 billion.

Oh, it was moving up again.

That's right.

It

SPEAKER(?).

It was higher.

MR. GUFFEY.

Have excess reserves come down this past week?

MR. AXILROD. They've generally been running relatively high.
I don't know how they're going to come out this week.
MR. GUFFEY.

Well, does that account for the drop of the--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. This is a particularly confusing period.
But what I'm looking at is the recent trend in the money supply--and
if anything it may go too low--and the economic outlook. Steve is
looking at the willingness of the banks to borrow recently. He says
the money markets are relatively easy, given the amount of borrowing,
so that leads him to believe that the borrowing figure ought to stay
up. So, there are your choices.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.

The economy may be getting a little

stronger.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If that's what you think--that the economy
may be a little strong and it continued--that would give weight to
what Steve is saying. If the risk is the money supply being too high,
you shade borrowing up and you end up where he is.
MR. WALLICH. Well, the banks still haven't exhausted much of
their borrowing capacity for this quarter. In other words, we
probably can expect them to be borrowing more in January and February
than in March, given the administrative procedures.
MR. GRAMLEY. Well, I certainly would go along with a level
of borrowing that's lower.
MS. TEETERS. That's not inconsistent with the targets we
have for the money supply?

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CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. SCHULTZ.

Who knows?

I don't know.

MR. PARTEE.

I think it is.

SPEAKER(?).

I think so.

MR. GRAMLEY. It's pretty hard to guess. We're talking about
$250 million from borrowing. None of us knows the accuracy of our
forecast of borrowing so we don't know who is going to be right.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
MR. GRAMLEY.

Anybody for $1.3 billion?

That's a good compromise.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let me assume something generally in that
neighborhood. It depends upon how we want to word it. Is there any
appeal to saying 5 to 6 percent as a hypothetical figure for M-1A and
M-1B? I suppose we'd say 8 percent or so for M2.
MR. GRAMLEY.

I think it would make good sense to--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I'm talking now about the directive
language. We fill in those blanks by saying 5 to 6 percent for the
M1s and about 8 percent for M2 and leave the federal funds range
where it is at 15 to 20 percent, with the understood borrowing
assumption. We did have language in the last directive implying that
we were less concerned about a shortfall than an overshoot. Do you
want to retain some language of that sort or not?
SEVERAL.

No.

MR. PARTEE.

I don't think so--not after December.

VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. We may want to help correct any
misimpressions of the kind you mentioned earlier by saying
"recognizing the shortfall in December."
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It might be useful to get some pretty
clear language--I don't know whether in the directive or not--about
what this implies for the quarterly average. We'd say it implies a
low quarterly average to avoid misconceptions.
MS. TEETERS. What period exactly are you talking about:
December-to-March or the quarterly average or from February?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. In the 5 to 6 percent figure, we're
talking December-to-March. I guess it doesn't make any difference.
Well, the average makes a difference. It doesn't make any difference,
if I understand this, [if we use] from January-to-March.
MS. TEETERS. The 5 to 6 percent for M-1B is a lot closer to
"C" than it is to "B."
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. If it'll make you happy, I'll look at the
January-to-March on this now.

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MR. MAYO.

It doesn't make a difference anyway.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. What I was talking about was the Decemberto-March figure. For some reason it seems to make very little
difference which one we're looking at.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON.
figures in the directive?

Then you would put the quarterly

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I would suggest putting some quarterly
figure in the directive just so people can see it in perspective.
MR. ALTMANN.

Directive or policy record?

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I think the directive, in case anybody
5 to 6 percent
just reads the directive. So, that's the proposition:
for the M1s, about 8 percent for M2, 15 to 20 percent on the federal
funds rate, and an understood initial borrowing level somewhere around
$1.3 billion. These borrowings always mean adjustment borrowing as
interpreted by Mr. Axilrod. Those are all the specifications we need.
And there is no bias in the statement. Is that clear?
MR. BALLES. The only thing that isn't quite clear to me at
least is what the Manager will understand he's to do, if, as, and when
the borrowing assumption goes considerably off from the $1.3 billion.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. I don't think it's if the borrowing
assumption goes off; it's if the money supply trend goes off. If it
goes low, he reduces it; if it goes high, he increases it.
SPEAKER(?).
MR. WALLICH.

The path?
The borrowing.

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

The borrowing, yes.

MR. GUFFEY. What is the federal funds rate assumption
consistent with $1.3 billion of borrowing?
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
to decline. That's a--

Apparently Mr. Axilrod thinks it's going

MR. AXILROD. That's the range of uncertainty. If you
believe the borrowing level of early December and early January, you
might think there will be an increase. If you believe the borrowing
level of very recent weeks, you might think there will be a decline.
MR. STERNLIGHT. Well, our guessing hasn't been very good on
this, but if I made a guess-CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Yes, the guessing hasn't been very good.

MR. STERNLIGHT. --I'd think it would drift off somewhat with
$1.3 billion in borrowing.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. It's implicit in Steve's earlier comment
that he thinks it's likely to drift off, but there's a considerable
amount of uncertainty.

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2/2-3/81

MR. PARTEE. You mean it would drift off so long as the
aggregates aren't coming in strong.
MR. ROOS. In line with the spirit of quick adjustments on
these, could we ask the Manager to incorporate in his report at our
next meeting some record, as specific as possible, of what happened in
terms of unanticipated fluctuations and how the Desk responded?
MR. PARTEE.
get them now.
MR. AXILROD.

Adjustments in the nonborrowed path?

We already

Yes, we generally put that in the Bluebook each

time.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.
voting on?

Okay.

Do people understand what we're

MR. ALTMANN.
Chairman Volcker
Vice Chairman Solomon
Governor Gramley
President Guffey
President Morris
Governor Partee
Governor Rice
President Roos
Governor Schultz
Governor Teeters
Governor Wallich
President Winn
MR. SCHULTZ.
SPEAKER(?).
MR. SCHULTZ.

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes

That's better.
It was hard.
It was asymmetric in that--

CHAIRMAN VOLCKER. Let me ask another question that occurred
to me earlier. I don't think we have to make this a Committee
decision. Mr. Axilrod keeps telling me that if we make the target
wide enough one target we can always make--which makes people happy-is the reserve base because it's four-fifths currency and it's a
fairly easy figure to predict.
I'm talking about the annual targets.
Do you think it would be useful to put in a statement someplace--not
in terms of an operational target--that we believe this is all
consistent with growth in the monetary base of such and such?
MR. MORRIS.
OTHERS.

Sure.

Yes.

MR. WALLICH. I feel there is a matter or principle involved
here in that the base, in my mind, is not a defensible figure. It
happens to fit. We can get a correlation with any large number that
grows slowly the way currency does, but it isn't meaningful.

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MR. GRAMLEY. Henry, I've compromised my principles on M-1A,
M-1B, M2, and M3. You ought to be able to compromise yours on the
base.
VICE CHAIRMAN SOLOMON. We fully agreed to what you proposed,
Henry, shading from alternative "B" and "C."
MR. WALLICH. Well, [I dissented] because of the borrowing
assumption--I wanted $1.5 billion--and the interest rate. I would
have been willing to settle for less than what I said, which was "C,"
but not quite so low.
CHAIRMAN VOLCKER.

Okay, thank you.
END OF MEETING