Full text of Federal Open Market Committee Meeting Minutes, Transcripts, and Other Documents : Meeting, June 29-30, 1999 : Transcript

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Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee
June 29-30, 1999
A meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was held in the offices of the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 29, 1999, at
2:30 p.m. and continued on Wednesday, June 30, 1999, at 9:00 a.m.
PRESENT: Mr. Greenspan, Chairman
Mr. McDonough, Vice Chairman
Mr. Boehne
Mr. Ferguson
Mr. Gramlich
Mr. Kelley
Mr. McTeer
Mr. Meyer
Mr. Moskow
Mr. Stern
Messrs. Broaddus, Guynn, Jordan, and Parry, Alternate Members of
the Federal Open Market Committee
Mr. Hoenig, Ms. Minehan, and Mr. Poole, Presidents of the Federal
Banks of St. Louis, Boston, and Kansas City respectively
Mr. Kohn, Secretary and Economist
Mr. Bernard, Deputy Secretary
Ms. Fox, Assistant Secretary
Mr. Gillum, Assistant Secretary
Mr. Mattingly, General Counsel
Mr. Prell, Economist
Ms. Johnson, Economist
Messrs. Alexander, Cecchetti, Hooper, Hunter, Lang,
Lindsey, Rolnick, Rosenblum,1/ Slifman, and
Stockton, Associate Economists
Mr. Fisher, Manager, System Open Market Account
Mr. Ettin, Deputy Director, Division of Research
and Statistics, Board of Governors
Messrs. Madigan and Simpson, Associate Directors, Divisions of
Monetary Affairs and Research and Statistics respectively,
Board of Governors

_________________________
1/ Attended Tuesday’s session only.

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Messrs. Porter 2/ and Reinhart, Deputy Associate Directors, Division of
Monetary Affairs, Board of Governors
Mr. Reifschneider, 2/ Section Chief, Division of Research and Statistics,
Board of Governors
Mses. Edwards 3/ and Mauskopf 3/ and Messrs. Lebow 2/ and
Orphanides, 2/ Senior Economists, Divisions of Monetary Affairs,
International Finance, Research and Statistics, and Monetary Affairs
respectively, Board of Governors
Ms. Garrett and Mr. Tetlow, 2/ Economists, Divisions of Monetary Affairs
and Research and Statistics respectively, Board of Governors
Ms. Low, Open Market Secretariat Assistant, Division of
Monetary Affairs, Board of Governors
Mr. Barron, First Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of
Atlanta
Messrs. Beebe, Eisenbeis, Goodfriend, Hakkio, Rasche, and Sniderman,
Senior Vice Presidents, Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco,
Atlanta, Richmond, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Cleveland
respectively
Mr. Fuhrer and Ms. Perelmuter, Vice Presidents, Federal Reserve Banks
of Boston and New York respectively

_________________________
2/ Attended portion of the meeting relating to the discussion of the policy implications of
uncertainty about key economic variables.
3/ Attended portions of the meeting relating to the Committee’s review of the economic outlook
and consideration of its monetary and debt ranges for 1999 and 2000.

Transcript of Federal Open Market Committee Meeting of
June 29-30, 1999
Tuesday, June 29--Afternoon Session
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Good afternoon, everyone. Would somebody like to
move approval of the minutes of the May 18 meeting?
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. So move.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Without objection. Mr. Fisher.
MR. FISHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be referring to the usual package of
colored charts that is in front of you. 1/
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, four perceptions are
currently influencing financial market behavior. It seems to me that each
of these perceptions contains certain elements of truth but also, I fear,
certain fallacies that could come back to haunt us. These perceptions are:
First, that signs of a pickup in European growth are causing a rise in
expectations for a European Central Bank (ECB) rate hike later this year;
second, that the strength of the U.S. economy has been the major factor
causing the weakening of the euro over the last six months; third, that the
Japanese monetary authorities can be relied upon to stabilize the yen with
verbal and official intervention; and fourth, that the levels of interest rates
and of economic activity in the United States will be principally
determined by the words and deeds of the members of the Federal Open
Market Committee. In my remarks, I will address each of these
perceptions in turn.
In the charts on the first page of the package, you can see that the
forward rates jumped a bit on the Committee’s announcement on May 18
but stabilized or even rallied a bit until May 27 and then began to back up
through most of June. I will return to the issue of the course of U.S.
interest rates later when I discuss the bond market.
For now, I would like to focus on the euro forward rates, which
appear to have followed U.S. rates up. Euro-area 6-month and 9-month
forward 3-month deposit rates are up 25 basis points or so since your last
meeting. There have been a number of positive signs for the euro-11
economy, including greater-than-expected first-quarter GDP in Germany,
increased German manufacturing orders, and improvement in German and
French business sentiment. But some less upbeat data have also been
reported in Europe, including an increase in German unemployment in
May, a decrease in German retail sales in April, weak French exports in
1

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

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April, and weak Italian production in April. So, while some signs of a
bottoming in the European economy have emerged, I don’t think that
translates directly into concrete expectations of an ECB rate hike. Rather,
evidence of a slight pickup in activity coupled with strong expectations for
U.S. rate increases, against the backdrop of a weak euro, have completely
eliminated any expectations of further rate cuts by the ECB and in that
sense have increased the risks of a rate hike.
But this has left euro-area interest rate markets without any direction,
leaving them highly susceptible to being dragged around by the movement
in U.S. rates. Unfortunately, I did not include in these charts a panel on
the German yield curve. But in the period since your last meeting the
10-year German bund and, most surprisingly, the 2-year German bund
have marched along with our yield curve almost in lock step as they too
have backed up over the last 60 days. It may turn out that the euro-area
economy has turned and will pick up steam from this point forward, but
most of the backup in euro-area interest rates appears to me to be a case of
their following our lead.
In the bottom panel of this chart, which depicts Japanese forward
rates, you can see that the 9-month forward 3-month rate backed up
following the report of a much stronger-than-expected GDP number for
the first quarter. Then, it seems to me, the data go berserk in this panel.
Even though we have checked and doubled checked them, this is the best
we have been able to come up with. But you should also recognize that
this scale is twice that of the other panels on this chart in order to provide
any view at all of Japanese interest rates. There is a level of noise in the
Japanese markets that I don’t even pretend to understand. But I will hold
with my assessment that I don’t think anyone really expects the Bank of
Japan to raise rates any time soon. There is much seesawing in views
about what to expect in the Tankan survey. Every few days authorities
step forward to say they still think the economy is weak, and this has been
going on for some time.
Turning to the next chart, the steady weakening of the euro against
the dollar since its launch in January has been widely attributed to the
surprising strength of the U.S. economy. Obviously, the relative strength
of the U.S. economy versus the European economies has played a role in
the movements of the dollar against the euro but it does not explain the
weakness of the euro against the yen. It strikes me that if one wants to
make the case that Europe’s growth differential with the United States has
been the principal cause of the euro’s weakness, one needs to look at the
relationships among all three currencies. If one does that, I think it is
evident that the yen has been playing a dominant role, both in the last six
months and over the last two years.

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In the third page of charts, the top panel presents a view of G-3
exchange rates from the dollar’s perspective, depicting the value since
January of 1997 of one dollar in terms of the euro in red and the value of
one dollar in terms of the yen divided by one hundred in green. The
bottom panel provides a view of exchange rates from the yen’s
perspective, depicting the value of one hundred yen in dollars, the green
line, and the value of 100 yen in euros, the blue line.
With the naked eye I think you can see that the yen-based pair in the
bottom panel track each other much more closely than the dollar-based
pair in the top panel. Comparing the correlation coefficients noted in the
subperiods in the top and bottom panels, you can see that the only period
in which the daily changes of the dollar pair tracked more closely was
from January through April of 1997. From May 1997 onward, when the
unwinding of the yen carry trades began to put pressure on the Thai baht,
the daily changes in the yen pair have correlated much more closely.
Now, neither of these graphs nor the correlations is proof that the yen
is the principal driver of the G-3 exchange rates. But I do think the data
powerfully suggest that the differences between North America on the one
hand and Europe on the other are much less significant than the
differences, as expressed in exchange rates, between Japan on the one
hand and North America and Europe on the other.
If euro/yen and dollar/yen are moving to the beat of one drum, there
is only so much room left for independent expression in the euro/dollar
exchange rate. Again, I certainly believe that differences in growth
prospects between the United States and the euro-11 influence the
euro/dollar exchange rate. But I also think that the weak Japanese
economy and the crippled Japanese financial system have had an
oscillating influence on portfolio allocations that in turn have had a
significant impact on the major exchange rates--an impact that has been
ignored by those who do not take the time to consider all three sides of the
triangle.
Turning to the fourth page of charts, the top panel depicts euro/yen
and dollar/yen exchange rates as they have traded since the start of the
year. The bottom panel shows the implied volatilities of one-month
options on all three of the major currency pairs since the start of the year.
Now, the third perception I mentioned at the outset was that the
Japanese authorities can be relied upon to stabilize the yen with verbal and
official intervention. The germ of truth in that perception is that the
Japanese authorities have stabilized the yen so far this year, at least to
some appearances. The problem is that the market’s apparent reliance on
the authorities’ ability to do so is likely to be misplaced. On January 12,

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indicated by the vertical line on the left in the top panel, the Japanese
authorities purchased
And the shaded area on the right
indicates the
of dollar intervention and the
of
euro intervention the Japanese authorities conducted in mid-June.
While there was a modest uptick in the implied volatilities, as shown
in the bottom panel, what surprises me is how little and how short-lived
that reaction was. Indeed, dollar/yen and euro/yen implied volatilities are
back to their lows of the year. Anecdotal evidence from the market
suggests strongly that many who have exposures are simply leaving them
unhedged and that others are eager to write options and collect premiums,
leaving themselves unhedged, all in the expectation that the Japanese
authorities will keep the yen contained. It is possible that the yen will
stabilize; I don’t want to rule that out entirely. But I think it is more likely
that the reliance on that expectation will simply delay the position
adjustments--or worse, will encourage an entirely new round of yen carry
trades.
The fifth page of charts addresses the last perception I mentioned-­
that the levels of interest rates and of economic activity in the United
States will be determined principally by the words and deeds of the
members of this Committee. I should, of course, point out that there is an
element of truth behind that perception also, particularly with respect to
the predictable impact of the Committee’s deeds on short-term rates.
Within the last few weeks, in the absence of what we might normally
think of as noteworthy data, it seems to me that bond yields have been
pushed higher by a medley of unattributed voices. The top panel depicts
several stages of the bond market’s movements since your last meeting.
First, I think it is worth noting that in the days following the Committee’s
announcement on May 18 the bond market rallied. The long bond rallied
every day that week; along the rest of the yield curve other bonds backed
up on the day after the announcement but rallied for the rest of the week.
Now, in defense of the market, I don’t think its initial reaction was
unreasonable. After all, the 10-year Treasury had already backed up 50
basis points in yield from early April. I think the market took some
pleasure in seeing that the central bank was preparing to react to the
perceived risk of inflation but did not plan to do so abruptly or in a kneejerk fashion. I think it is also worth noting that many market participants
interpreted the FOMC’s announcement as implying a heightened risk of a
25 basis point increase in rates.
However, beginning on May 27, the market began receiving a series
of reports about the views of the Committee, including comments by
FOMC members and other Fed officials suggesting that a more aggressive
tightening should be expected. This threat, giving the market a new sense

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of risk, triggered a backup in yields and anxious reactions to several not
particularly significant data releases.
On June 1 the long bond backed up 11 basis points after the NAPM
prices paid index came in at 55.2 rather than closer to the expected 53.3.
On June 4 the bond market backed up only 3 basis points in reaction to the
release of the data on employment and average hourly wages; but then on
June 11 it backed up 9 basis points after the report of a 1 percent increase
in retail sales versus expectations of 0.7 or 0.8 percent. Subsequently, the
release of the flat CPI on June 16 and the Chairman’s June 17 testimony
before the Joint Economic Committee calmed the market with a
perception that a moderate tightening was in store. But as you can see on
the chart, the “relief rally” was short-lived. By early last week, the market
was once again on the receiving end of a chorus of voices threatening
more aggressive actions.
In my judgment, if you had tried to trade in the bond market during
this period and had followed only the FOMC’s announcement on May 18,
the data releases as they came out, and the Chairman’s Joint Economic
Committee testimony, you would have lost a lot of money. On the other
hand, if you had subscribed to all the high-priced insider rags and
carefully tracked the utterances, attributed and unattributed, of FOMC
members, you would have fared a good bit better.
Looking at the bottom two panels on this page, you can see that credit
spreads and volatilities did back up a little, but not very much--less than I
would have expected, given all the fits and starts in the bond market. I
think it is particularly noteworthy that the implied volatility on the S&P
futures contract was actually lower on the period.
In sum, there seems to be a very odd mix of anxiety and complacency
in this market, which I don’t pretend to understand fully nor do I yet see
how it will work itself out.
Finally, turning to domestic open market operations, the chart on page
6 depicts the volatility of the fed funds rate. We had significantly less
volatility and a much better contained funds market during this period than
we had earlier in the year. The red dots cover the intermeeting period and
the blue dots cover the period from January 14 through May 18. As you
can see, the median value of the effective deviation from the target in
absolute terms was only 5 basis points and the standard deviation was
down to 8 basis points during the recent intermeeting period. So we have
had a much calmer funds market and funds have traded a bit on the soft
side.

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The rather extraordinary conditions in the current maintenance period
have posed something of a challenge for the Desk. The market had a very
low appetite for reserves coming into this period, expecting to hold large
quantities of excess reserves at the quarter-end. And even as we left
reserves quite short, the market traded on the soft side. Last Thursday, as
the market began to turn its attention to the shortage for this week, we
arranged a 3-day forward RP for settlement Monday to inject about $7
billion to cover these last days.
But given the combination of events tomorrow--a quarter-end, a
maintenance period end, and a very high expectation that the Committee
will raise rates--it has been rather hard to get the funds rate to trade very far
below 5 percent, even though I think we have finally succeeded in that effort
today. I will be candid, however; I have some fears that our efforts to do
this over a Monday and Tuesday will lead to a fed funds rate of zero by
tomorrow night, notwithstanding your announcement, whatever it may be.
I should mention that over the first six months of the year the SOMA
portfolio has expanded by almost $30 billion, which is a record expansion
of our outright holdings. This has been in response principally to currency
in circulation, but we have been adding to the portfolio all along the
maturity spectrum. Even with the slightly stronger currency growth, we
still think that the normal $12 billion leeway will be adequate for the
coming intermeeting period.
Mr. Chairman, we had no foreign exchange operations during the
period but I will need the Committee’s ratification of our domestic
operations. And I would be happy to answer any questions.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Questions for Peter?
MR. BROADDUS. Just a quick question on your chart discussion, Peter: On the
third page where you were talking about the cross rates, I am wondering as I read the
portion of the bottom panel covering 1999 whether things may be changing. It looks as if
the correlation between dollar/yen and euro/yen is diminishing in relation to what it was
in earlier periods. Maybe the opposite is happening in the top panel. Am I looking at
that right?
MR. FISHER. Our perception is very much that the daily changes are still being
driven by the yen. The anxiety of the Japanese authorities is now as much focused on
euro/yen as dollar/yen, and they intervened in euro/yen for the first time ever during this
period. I agree with you but I think some other things are going on here; I don’t mean to
suggest that this encompasses all of the inputs that determine exchange rates. Still, during

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these six months and even in recent weeks, the daily changes up and down in euro/yen and
dollar/yen seem to be moving together. Although I did not refer to this in my remarks, we
hear anecdotally that there is a sense among market participants, both in Europe and in
Japan, that a lot of the pressure on the yen reflects Japanese investors who had established
positions in Europe and are coming back into yen now that they are deeply under water.
What you can’t tell from this panel, because it is not expressed in terms of exchange rates,
is that at the end of September of last year, the end of Japan’s fiscal half-year, euro/yen
was at 160. Now it is at 124 or so. So, anyone from Japan who took on a position in euro
assets at that earlier point is deeply under water. It is actually a widespread perception in
Tokyo that the Ministry of Finance’s incentive to intervene was to try to help institutional
investors get out of those positions without strengthening the yen. So, other things are
certainly going on. The sense of the strong U.S. economy vis-à-vis Europe is also
certainly apropos.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Peter, I have a question for you or Karen about the huge Japanese
support of the yen. Has this intervention been sterilized completely or partially? The
numbers are so large that they would have great significance for their monetary base, and
I just wondered what the policy is.
MR. FISHER. The normal course that I believe the Bank of Japan is following is
that they sterilize this intervention. It is a very complicated arrangement. It’s as if the
Exchange Stabilization Fund, the equivalent accounting entity, could actually issue its
own bills to the market to finance itself. That’s in effect what the Bank of Japan does on
behalf of the Ministry. So in the first step, the Bank of Japan gives the Ministry yen
liquidity. But the Ministry then has to finance that by borrowing yen in the markets and
issuing securities directly to repay the Bank of Japan; it would be the accounting
equivalent of the Exchange Stabilization Fund issuing its own bills directly. So it is
sterilized. I think that question is different from the question of the extent of
accommodation in the Bank of Japan’s monetary stance. It is still a very accommodative
stance. They have managed to keep their overnight rate trading at 2 or 3 basis points,
which is the brokers’ spread. So that rate has been effectively zero throughout the period.

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MS. JOHNSON. I think that “zero” is the magic word. Whatever intervention
the Bank of Japan chooses to do, whether it is in domestic assets or in foreign exchange-­
and the latter is what they have been doing--they no longer have room on the downside at
the very short-term end of the money market to lower interest rates any further. So in
that sense there is no such thing as unsterilized intervention because there is no place to
go. There are lots of people out there arguing about whether or not allowing the
monetary base to continue to expand under those circumstances has expansionary
influences, and through what channels. We are obviously looking for the latter in Japan.
But in the most ordinary sense of sterilized and unsterilized intervention, both in terms of
what happened on the balance sheet and whether it did or did not affect short-term money
market interest rates, the answer would be that they have sterilized.
MR. PARRY. That is rather interesting because, of course, we often think about
sterilization not necessarily in terms of the impact on rates but on the monetary base.
MS. JOHNSON. At this point, the change in the Japanese monetary base doesn’t
seem to be having any particular implications. At least changes of this order of
magnitude can’t be perceived as being followed by changes, for example, in better
lending conditions and increased bank credit creation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I think it is instructive that the Japanese are
creating what essentially are very useful experiments in intervention, whether we call it
sterilized or otherwise. As you may recall, they sold

in U.S. dollars and

bought yen a while back with very modest, if any, effects. They have done the reverse
this time, except they have added another

or so in euro, with little effect. Many

economists would argue theoretically that sterilized intervention cannot affect exchange
rates materially. What the Japanese have succeeded in doing is proving that proposition.
Vice Chair.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Peter, considering that the earlier version
of the yen carry trade contributed so dangerously to the Thai baht explosion in July 1997,
are you and your colleagues at other central banks able to track reasonably well the
buildup of that so we can take any supervisory action that is appropriate?

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MR. FISHER. At the aggregate level, it is quite hard; the data are rather poor. At
the firm level, I presume one can find out what decisions individual firms have made.
Tracking this involves relying on anecdotal information. There was an attempt to
tabulate some data for Japan, which was not very satisfactory. The results were
published by some outfit here in Washington whose name I don’t recall, but the data were
pretty poor once you scratched the surface. When I checked with the Bank of Japan, they
told us to be very suspicious of those data. So unfortunately, the answer is no, we cannot
track that at an aggregate level. But it is something we are always talking about with
others in the market and we get some anecdotal information. I don’t know how accurate
that is.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. So some supervisory sniffing around might
be appropriate?
MR. FISHER. Yes, it is certainly easier to try to get a handle on it at the firm
level.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President McTeer.
MR. MCTEER. Peter, I think you have gotten a little too subtle for me and I am
not sure I’m following you. Why did you choose to focus on this issue of whether it is a
yen thing or a dollar phenomenon? What significance do you think that has for the
Committee?
MR. FISHER. I am worried about the risk that people perceive it as a dollar thing
when in fact I think it is a yen thing. I think sloppy policies, sloppy policy reactions, and
uninformed market behavior can result if people think they are responding to one
stimulus when that stimulus really isn’t the dominant one. So my first instinct is to make
sure my thinking is as clear as I can make it regarding what may be influencing exchange
rates. That is really the major thrust of my message, nothing more than that.
MR. MCTEER. Did Japan ever intervene with marks?
MR. FISHER. No, they did not. They hold a few marks but I don’t believe they
ever formally intervened in marks.
MR.MCTEER. So this could be the beginning of the euro as an intervention
currency? This is the first time it was ever used that way?

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MR. FISHER. It was the first time it was used by the Japanese. I think it
reflected a certain flamboyance on the part of the Ministry of Finance, trying to grab
attention for itself in Tokyo. But also, to be fair, a lot of the pressures were emanating
from the movement in euro/yen. So to the extent they wanted to respond, they realized
that if they only intervened in dollar/yen, it would be a release valve and would be hard to
get their hands on the problem. So there was a tactical reason, but I think flamboyance
might also have been a reason.
I was very surprised to see the ECB begin a relationship by intervening as agent
on behalf of the Japanese authorities because the Bundesbank had always resisted doing
that.
I should be clear that this normal courtesy may increasingly
become something of an artifact since most of the foreign exchange market trades
through a single computer, or at least the price setting takes place in the electronic
brokering system (EBS) terminal. So liquidity is not a geographic phenomenon; it is a
temporal phenomenon of when people are connected to and are watching the EBS. So
we may get away from this notion of geographic intervention, but that hasn’t quite
happened yet.
MR. MCTEER. I believe your fourth point was that people seem to be reacting to
rhetoric more than to the statistics. What was the significance of bringing that to our
attention?
MR. FISHER. I think the bond market has been focused on the words of
members of this Committee, both for attribution and not, to an extent that I have not seen
in my admittedly not very long tenure in this position. I find that disturbing in terms of
the influence on policy. It looks to me as if this bond market has priced in a 25 basis
point move about four times. I can’t prove that and I don’t know that.
MR. MCTEER. Cumulatively?
MR. FISHER. They have taken that 25 basis point increase in and out. I am not
suggesting that that has any profound macroeconomic effect. But the in and out pricing
repetitions have been in response to the rhetoric, not the economic data. That was my
point.

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MR. MCTEER. Do you think the announcement of the bias in the directive is
part of this?
MR. FISHER. Clearly something very different happened after the last meeting
with the announcement of a bias. I said at the end of my remarks that there is a strange
mix of what market players are anxious about and what they are complacent about. I
looked for a way to express to the Committee what I thought they were anxious about and
what I thought they were complacent about. I think their focus is misplaced but, to be
candid, I can’t quite put my finger on it. They seem to have some expectation that words
from this Committee, whether individually or collectively, will somehow remove all the
uncertainties. That is rather naïve and myopic. But they hang on every word as if it were
going to solve the uncertainties for them. I just don’t think it will. Indeed, it hasn’t, as
you can see by how the bond market has behaved. So if I was not clear enough, I hope
that helps.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Some of the initial commentary I saw after the announcement by
the Japanese in early June of their first-quarter number was along the lines that it was a
statistical fluke or window-dressing. The view was that it wasn’t real and that by yearend we would see the Japanese economy back in the tank again. A fair amount of the
commentary had the tone of: “This is something we did not forecast so it couldn’t
possibly be true.” More recently, I have seen more commentaries suggesting that the first
quarter may have represented a turning point, though the GDP number may be
exaggerated, and that from this point forward Japan would be viewed as having seen the
worst. Is there any dominance of one opinion or the other in the street?
MR. FISHER. I certainly defer to Karen for a view on the real merits of what
you’ve suggested. In terms of the view on the Street, I think most non-Japanese
observers are still highly skeptical. They are not yet in the camp that thinks this is for
real, although they are intrigued and are wondering where the opportunities may be.
After all, the Nikkei turned up. So there is a little bait-on-the-hook dangling there for
them. I think the Japanese are quite anxious and wondering if it is time to bring their
money home. The quantities do not matter, but the price should. So in Tokyo there is a
lot of anxiety about that. There also is a lot of anxiety about what the impact on Japan

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might be of any action by this Committee. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but they
think that if this Committee raises rates, it will strengthen the yen. And that actually is an
issue within Japan as well. So I think the anxieties about this being a turning point are
somewhat geographically separated, if I can put it that way. But if Karen wants to add
anything on the specifics-­
MS. JOHNSON. I will defer my comments on that until after the Chart Show,
since we are going to go into some of those issues as we return to honest-to-goodness real
economics! [Laughter]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Any further questions for Peter? If not, would
somebody like to move to ratify the transactions?
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Move approval of the domestic open
market operations.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Without objection. Let’s move on to the Chart
Show. Mike Prell.
MR. PRELL. I don’t know how real the economics are, but there are tangible
charts to which we will be referring. 2/
I thought I’d begin with a brief update on the second quarter, taking
into account a few data we’ve received since the Greenbook was
completed.
As usual at this point, we’re still attempting to blend the labor market
data with the expenditure figures to get a fix on current-quarter GDP. The
relationship is loose, but the weaker growth of production worker hours in
April and May, shown in the upper left panel of Chart 1, suggests that we
should look for a moderation of real output growth this quarter.
Considering the spending numbers as well, our best guess for the real
GDP increase is still about 3 percent.
Yesterday’s report on consumer spending for May contained no
major surprises. Anticipating a moderate increase in June, we see real
PCE this quarter running something over 4 percent--off markedly from the
6¾ percent first-quarter pace.
Housing starts, at the middle left, fell off considerably on average in
April and May--we think mainly because of limited supplies of labor and
materials, rather than any shortage of demand. Owing to the lags between
2

/ A copy of the material used by Mr. Prell and Ms. Johnson is appended to the transcript.

(Appendix 2)

6/29-30/99

13

starts and construction outlays, real residential investment probably will be
up, but only modestly, this quarter.
As plotted at the right, last week’s advance report from manufacturers
showed that shipments of non-defense capital goods, excluding aircraft,
were strong through May. This reinforces our view that there will be a
hefty increase in PDE this quarter, although various anecdotes and the
NAPM survey would suggest that some of the rise in shipments of capital
goods might show up in export sales.
In that regard, the panel at the lower left shows that overall exports
firmed in April. Even so, the trade gap still was somewhat larger than the
first-quarter average, as we continued to exhibit an enormous appetite for
imports.
Turning to the right panel, it would appear that few of those imports
ended up in business inventories in April. The book value of
manufacturing and trade stocks, ex motor vehicles, rose only modestly-­
roughly matching the first-quarter rate of accumulation.
All told, then, the picture is one of a step-down in GDP growth this
quarter. But final demand can scarcely be said to have turned weak--and
inventories probably are lean enough that desires to build stocks will spur
production in coming months.
With that prelude, let me turn to the summary of the staff forecast,
contained in Chart 2. As has been the case for a long time now, we are
projecting a considerable moderation in the trend of real GDP growth.
The quarterly numbers represented by the bars in the upper left panel
gyrate later this year and in early 2000 because of our allowance for some
Y2K effects, but the general drift is toward a slightly sub-par growth
trend. Being just slightly sub-par, though, that growth probably would be
sufficient to hold the unemployment rate in the low 4s through next year.
Largely, but not solely, because of the continued tightness of the
labor market, we’re expecting that the rate of inflation will trend higher, as
may be seen in the bottom panels. The recent rebound in crude oil prices
generates an acceleration of the overall CPI to a 2¼ percent increase this
year; a leveling of oil prices holds total CPI inflation at the same average
pace in 2000 even as the core component accelerates. The acceleration in
overall GDP prices is smoother, because the direct oil price effects on this
index are smaller.
As we emphasized in the Greenbook, the stock market outlook--the
subject of the next chart--is quite central to our forecast. With the “drag”
from the external sector likely to be diminishing, the projected moderation

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14

of GDP growth hinges on a substantial slackening in the growth of
domestic demand. The half percentage point funds rate increase we’ve
assumed to occur in the next several months and the sustained higher level
of intermediate- and long-term interest rates should work in that direction.
However, a cessation of the uptrend in share prices is an important
ingredient as well, and whether that is indeed at hand is open to question.
The top left panel updates the provocative comparison of the 1920s
and 1990s bull markets that I included in the last chart show. We’re still
pretty much on track, with some upside ahead of us. Certainly, the fact
that the market has given up so little ground in the recent period of interest
rate run-up is testament to the abiding exuberance of investors.
That point is given further emphasis by the right panel, which shows
the current extraordinary narrowness of the equity premium, as proxied by
the gap between the earnings yield on the S&P 500, based on analysts’
profit expectations for the coming twelve months, and the real 10-year
Treasury rate.
The middle panels plotting price-earnings multiples alone are perhaps
less insightful analytically--but may still be of some interest. The left
panel in particular illustrates that the run-up in PEs has been unusual in
that it has occurred at a time so distant from a cyclical trough in profits.
Together, as we’ve suggested repeatedly--and evidently wrongly-­
these indicators would seem to suggest that the market could be vulnerable
to a quite sizable decline, if and as rosy corporate profit expectations are
disappointed. Nonetheless, we’ve projected only a flattening in share
prices. That still produces the decline in the household wealth-income
ratio charted in the lower left panel, however, which should help take the
steam out of consumer demand.
The little table at the right is intended to highlight the relative potency
of stock market effects today. Because of the huge run-up in the wealthincome ratio since the end of 1994, a given percentage change in share
prices translates into a much greater consumption effect than before. As
indicated, when we apply our standard rule of thumb to a 10 percent
decline in share prices, the effect on real PCE growth in the ensuing year
is now 0.4 percent, twice what it was earlier.
In the Greenbook, we simulated a rapid 25 percent decline in the
market, which had notable but not devastating effects on the growth of
activity. Looking at the panels above, one might be able to envision a
much deeper bear market. But, even with the simulation we performed, it
might be asked whether there could not be greater effects on demand than
predicted because of financial imbalances that our model cannot capture.

6/29-30/99

15

This is no simple matter to pin down, but Chart 4 provides a few
clues. First, the upper panel tends to allay one concern. Although the
volume of margin debt outstanding has skyrocketed, when scaled by the
value of equities, as it is here, it doesn’t look so startling.
However, this is a very narrow measure of leveraging and consequent
risk exposure. The right panel shows two aggregate ratios of households’
indebtedness to their holdings of liquid assets. The black line reveals that
debt has been rising considerably relative to holdings of the most liquid of
financial assets--deposits, money funds, and governments. But the red
line indicates that debt has been falling relative to a broader range of
assets that comprises as well corporate and municipal securities and
mutual funds. So, there’s not much sign here that even though debt has
been growing appreciably faster than income, household balance sheets in
the aggregate have become more illiquid.
Is there something lurking out there at a disaggregated level that
might imply a different assessment? We’ve generated some preliminary
tabulations from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances to address that
issue, and these are laid out in the middle panels. I’d note on the left panel
that there’s been a considerable shift in the distribution of household debt
from those without stock (a smaller portion of the population today) to
those who have significant amounts of stock--defined in the second
column as a holding equal to at least one-half year’s income.
But, if shareholders have taken on a larger amount of debt, they’ve
not incurred extraordinary debt-service burdens. As indicated in the
second column of the right panel, the median monthly payment burden as
a percent of income for significant shareholders has increased, but it is
somewhere between the ratios for households with smaller or no
shareholdings. I should add the caveat that the income concept in these
ratios often includes realized capital gains, which might suggest the
possibility of some greater exposure for the shareholding households, but
another fact is that the significant shareholders also have relatively large
amounts of other assets. Thus, even if one were to assume a very deep
drop in the stock market, it would not generally have drastic effects on
their ability to cover their debts.
The bottom panels focus on another conceivable point of
vulnerability, the banking system. As you can see at the left, the black
line indicates that almost all banking assets are held by institutions that are
well capitalized. The comfort one might draw from that fact today is
perhaps a little less than would have been the case a couple of years ago,
however, because--as shown by the red line--the margin by which the
banks exceed their regulatory capital requirements has shrunk a bit.

6/29-30/99

16

If one were to think about how the banking system might be affected
by a stock market plunge, at least one can rule out the more direct links
that proved devastating in Japan when their bubble burst. Having
consulted with our supervisory folks, it appears that the greatest concern
might be that loans have been made to firms that have engaged in
aggressively priced acquisitions, with the expectation that those loans will
be repaid out of proceeds of subsequent stock or junk bond issues. The
junk bond market looks better today than it did last fall, as reflected in the
yield spread at the right; but with defaults already rising the spreads have
remained appreciable. A broad retrenchment in stock prices might cause
an edgy junk market to turn very sour and leave banks with either losses or
impaired assets that would in turn make them more cautious lenders. My
sense though, is that--short of a severe market setback--we are not talking
about financial dislocations of such a scope and intensity that we need to
mark up the customary wealth and cost-of-capital effects substantially.
The kinds of pressures financial markets will face obviously will
depend considerably on the amount of inflation that lies ahead. Chart 5
summarizes the labor market forces impinging on wages. Our forecast of
labor demand is premised on what is, relative to prevailing professional
norms, a pretty optimistic assessment of the dimension of recent and
prospective structural gains in labor productivity. As you can see in the
top panel, however, we’re expecting that growth in output per hour will
slow in the near term, not because the structural improvements will ebb,
but because we expect that hiring won’t be geared down immediately and
commensurately as production decelerates.
In any event, we don’t foresee much relief from the labor market
tightness. The labor force participation rate, plotted in the middle left
panel, has been fluctuating in an essentially sideways direction for a while,
after having risen a bit as people perhaps were drawn into the workforce
partly by the perception that jobs were readily available. As indicated at
the right, the percentage of respondents to the Conference Board survey
who say that jobs are easy to get seems to be leveling out, and we’re
expecting labor force participation to remain in the recent range.
In this tight labor market, workers have achieved some leverage in the
wage-setting process, and we’re forecasting that compensation increases,
plotted at the lower left, will be tending to grow. We believe that we were
probably correct in expecting that the low rate of price inflation in the past
year or two would be moderating nominal wage increases, but the firstquarter fall-off in the ECI measure of compensation looks too low to
believe. In fact, doing some rethinking, partly in light of other
information that has come in of late, we have moved our ECI forecast
back up noticeably this time, after having initially dropped it quite

6/29-30/99

17

markedly in response to the first-quarter surprise. But, the basic point,
conveyed in the forecasts of both the ECI and the Productivity and Costs
series for hourly compensation, is that tight labor markets--with a helping
hand from Uncle Sam on the minimum wage front--are likely to produce
ongoing large real pay increases.
The right panel documents the real compensation gains in the
forecast, responding in part to questions that have arisen at past meetings.
I’ve based this on the Productivity and Costs series in part because it
relates more directly to the movements in income shares in the NIPAs.
The point that is highlighted here is that, though the projected real pay
gains may look rather skimpy relative to productivity trends when they are
measured against consumer prices, when they’re measured against product
prices they are quite sizable. Workers have been capturing a bigger share
of the pie.
This spells a squeeze on profit margins--unless businesses can find
some leverage of their own on the pricing side. We don’t think that they
will do so, but there are some risks. As you can see in the top panel of the
next chart, we have core consumer prices accelerating over the next year
and a half. This reflects in part the labor cost pressures I’ve just described.
In addition, there will be some pass-through into core prices of the
rebound in oil prices via higher transportation costs and other channels.
The middle left panel highlights another unfavorable factor--namely,
the turn that is likely to occur in non-oil import prices as the dollar peaks
and foreign economies manage to generate more domestic demand for
their output. One can already observe that import price trends have
become somewhat less favorable than they were earlier, with a rise in
materials prices being a significant element in that pattern.
Looking for signs of whether the tide might be turning in domestic
prices, one indicator that people sometimes consult as a measure of socalled “pipeline” inflation is the PPI core intermediate component,
graphed at the right. These prices don’t bulk large in terms of their weight
in overall production costs, but they can be an early indicator of broader
inflationary pressures. They’ve probably now posted their first quarterly
increase since 1997. Some of this is metals prices, which rallied in part on
Asian growth prospects; some of it is the effect of higher petroleum
feedstock costs; and some of it is the pressures on capacity in the
construction materials industry. These don’t quite smell like a broadbased inflationary surge, though. Moreover, the below-average overall
factory utilization rate in our forecast, shown at the lower left, suggests
that, although competitive pressures from abroad may ease a bit, a major
flare-up in goods price inflation is not in the immediate offing.

6/29-30/99

18

There have been some comments in Reserve Bank reports that
consumers have become somewhat less price conscious. This might
suggest some shift in inflation expectations. The final panel shows the
Michigan SRC median readings on 1 year and 5-to-10 year expectations.
On the moving average basis plotted here to filter out some of the noise,
both series are off their lows, but whether the downtrends of the past
several years are in process of reversing is not clear. A sanguine--and
quite plausible--interpretation would be that expectations were damped to
an extra degree last year by the plunge in energy prices and that we have
seen a one-time adjustment back up in light of the recent rebound in those
prices. The pattern here is not dissimilar to those in the charts of the price
series themselves: In neither case is the direction unambiguous and as a
result they perhaps serve best as a sort of Rorschach test for one’s degree
of inflation phobia.
Karen will now discuss the international picture.
MS. JOHNSON. The general tone of developments abroad since the
February chart show has been favorable. On balance, the repercussions of
the spread of the global financial crisis to Latin America have not been as
dire as we feared in February; signs of recovery in Asia have added to the
sense that the crisis, as such, is at or near its end. Nevertheless, there is no
lack of risks embedded in the current foreign outlook.
A major element of the more sanguine outlook for the rest of the
world is the perception that various financial market indicators are
signaling progress in the real economy. Chart 7 shows selected real
exchange rates and stock market indexes.
The top pair refer to the major industrial countries. The black line on
the left panel shows that on balance during 1999 the dollar has risen in real
terms relative to an average of the major foreign currencies. In large part,
that rise reflects the strengthening of the dollar relative to the euro (the
blue line). The dollar has also risen on balance in real terms against the
Japanese yen during 1999, but it remains far below the value it had
reached in the middle of last year. In the forecast, we expect a gradual
depreciation of the dollar in real terms against these currencies, as relative
macroeconomic conditions become less supportive of the dollar and as
market participants become more aware of the growing U.S. external
imbalance--a topic to which I shall return at the end of my remarks.
Stock prices for these countries, on the right, are among the financial
indicators signaling optimism during the past several months. Although
they declined sharply last August and September during the turmoil
following the Russian debt moratorium, they have increased on balance so
far in 1999, including the Japanese index.

6/29-30/99

19

The middle panels show the same variables for selected Asian
countries. In real terms, the dollar has reversed much of its appreciation
against the Thai baht and Korean won that occurred as the crisis spread in
1997. Most recently, those currencies have been fairly stable in nominal
terms and inflation has been quite contained, developments that we expect
will continue. We have incorporated into the forecast a stable Hong Kong
dollar peg to the U.S. dollar, but some nominal appreciation of the dollar
against the Chinese renminbi in 2000.
With U.S. inflation generally above that in Hong Kong, the result is
slight real dollar appreciation in both cases in our outlook. Asian stock
market indexes are among the most euphoric and may be overstating how
much progress has been made in addressing the structural problems laid
bare by the crisis. In recent months, the foreign sector of the Chinese
stock market (the black line) has risen particularly sharply.
The three major Latin American countries are shown at the bottom.
We are projecting that the Brazilian real will remain near current levels in
nominal terms. With Brazilian inflation contained but above U.S. rates,
the real should appreciate some in real terms, i.e. dollar depreciation.
Controversy over the Argentine peso convertibility regime abounds.
Proposals for dollarization are still actively discussed, yet there have been
market rumors of ending the peg. With little firm basis to judge how this
issue will be resolved, at least until the election in October, we continue to
expect the peg to hold. In that event, with Argentine inflation expected to
remain below U.S. rates, the dollar should rise slightly in real terms
against the Argentine peso. The stock markets in Brazil and Mexico have
shared in the optimism being expressed elsewhere. In Argentina, ongoing
market concerns have restrained increases.
Your next chart presents our outlook for foreign growth, with some
details on the industrial countries. As is evident in the top left, we
anticipate a convergence of U.S. real GDP growth with the average of that
abroad in 2000. Our view that real output growth abroad should pick up
this year is bolstered by the surprisingly robust first-quarter results that
have been reported for some countries, including Japan. We see some of
that strength as transitory, however, and so look for some offset in the
current quarter and, in general, have not extrapolated even stronger growth
performance into next year. As can be seen at the right, the lion’s share of
the improvement is expected to occur in developing Asia, with somewhat
less acceleration in Latin America. Industrial country growth is projected
to firm.
In the middle left panel, the latest data on industrial production reflect
the somewhat lackluster performance in Europe in recent quarters in

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20

contrast to the vigor in Canada. The latest data for Japan show some
improvement, but not enough to explain the 7.9 percent annual GDP
growth in the first quarter that was recently announced. Our projection for
sustained expansion in these countries rests in part on the accommodative
monetary conditions that are visible in the middle right panel. Some
improvement in business confidence, seen in the lower left panel, is
another factor leading us in that direction. The Japanese Tankan report for
the second quarter is due to be released shortly. A significant move in the
positive direction is widely expected, especially in light of the fact the
survey was taken shortly after the strong Q1 real GDP data were released.
The top panels on Chart 9 document the recovery that is unfolding in
the Asian crisis countries. Industrial production has been rebounding
since the middle of last year, with production in Korea moving above its
pre-crisis peak. Dollar interest rate spreads have moved back down,
though not to the levels of early 1997. This narrowing reflects improved
market confidence in these economies, but also the recognition that
spreads before the crisis were too low.
The recovery in the developing Asian countries remains vulnerable,
and a major disruption elsewhere could renew pressures on them.
Although we are expecting that China will experience sustained moderate
growth and financial stability, developments in that country are one
possible source of renewed volatility in Asia. The middle left panel
highlights some external issues. The Chinese trade surplus (in black) has
been shrinking since mid-1998. At first, a sharp drop-off in exports
narrowed the trade balance; in recent months, exports have recovered
somewhat but imports have surged. The higher rate of recorded imports
may reflect anti-smuggling initiatives taken recently by the Chinese. The
red line shows foreign direct investment in China. While there seem to be
seasonally low inflows in the first quarter, the data for this year are below
those for the first quarter in both 1997 and 1998. Foreign direct investment
has tended to go into the export sector and to support investment in the
non-state sector. The real depreciation of other Asian currencies has put
pressure on the Chinese export sector and may weaken inward direct
investment. The right panel illustrates the deflation that China has been
experiencing, another symptom of the depressed demand within China.
Industrial production bounced back in the second half of last year from
some slowing earlier. The most recent months’ data suggest that
production continues to expand moderately; as a consequence, our forecast
is for somewhat slower growth in China than has been the case in the past,
but we are not looking for a deflationary spiral to become established.
The lower left panel suggests some risks for the developing Asian
economies. The emergence of recovery and the return of financial market
confidence could undermine the momentum behind the reform process. In

6/29-30/99

21

Korea and other countries, where difficult issues of industrial relations and
corporate governance need to be addressed, moderate growth may lessen
the sense of urgency and the political will for reform. In many of these
countries, banking sector problems continue and non-performing loans are
still a large share of total bank loans. Moreover, the corporate sector
needs resolution of these debts so that private investment can resume
efficiently. In addition, weakness in the Chinese economy might spark
political turmoil there and could derail recovery in Asia in general.
The Latin American countries are featured on Chart 10. As you can
see in the upper left, production in Mexico has largely withstood the
spread of financial volatility to Latin America. In Brazil and especially
Argentina that is not the case; production has been significantly reduced.
For all three countries, the stripped spreads on dollar-denominated Brady
bonds have moved back down following the previous spikes. The most
recent segment of all three of those lines shows the backup in spreads that
has occurred in response to uncertainties in Argentina about the
government’s fiscal program and the commitment to the peg of the
currency to the U.S. dollar. Market nervousness was heightened by the
announcement in May of your move to a tightening bias and the possible
implications of a slower U.S. economy and higher dollar interest rates for
Latin America.
The middle left panel illustrates that improvement in the external
balances of these countries has been limited despite currency adjustment
in Brazil and Mexico and slower domestic demand. Continued
dependence on capital inflows implies that these countries remain
vulnerable to events that might disrupt global financial markets. Still, on
balance, events in these countries have been more favorable than we were
expecting in February. One bit of evidence is that Brazilian domestic
interest rates have come down, without negative repercussions, as shown
in the middle right panel. Lower domestic rates are critical in keeping the
domestic debt in Brazil from swelling at an alarming rate. The
surprisingly moderate response of inflation to the currency decline, shown
by the red line, has been an important factor behind the decline in
domestic interest rates.
The immediacy with which market spreads reacted to disappointing
news in Argentina suggests that the situation in Latin America remains
fragile. If key financial variables shift abruptly, the forecast of moderate
growth on average in the region could be derailed. The major risks appear
to be those listed in the lower left panel. Some of the fiscal steps taken to
date by Brazil were one-time measures. Evidence of significant forward
progress on a permanent basis is lacking. If markets sense continued
fiscal problems in Brazil, they will be quick to move rates, which in turn
will exacerbate the fiscal problems. In Argentina, both domestic and

6/29-30/99

22

foreign investors are essential to the maintenance of the currency peg and
to the financing of Argentina’s external deficit. Despite some insurance
that the government has taken out against financial contingencies,
Argentina remains vulnerable to a loss of confidence. Elections this year
in Argentina and next year in Mexico add to the markets’ sensitivity to
any indications of policy missteps by those governments.
My final two charts focus on U.S. trade. The top panels of Chart 11
show exports and imports for selected trading partner regions. Exports to
developing Asia stalled in 1997 and then declined; exports to Latin
America followed suit a bit later. Exports to Europe and Canada have, on
balance, grown in nominal terms, but not by much. In contrast, U.S.
imports from these regions have been a source of expanding demand that
has helped them to sustain expansions or mitigate declines of production.
In the oil market, an agreement in March among producers to restrict
supply and some evidence to date of compliance with that agreement have
been successful in raising spot oil prices. We expect that U.S. oil import
prices will follow this path, but that both those prices will move back
slightly as some producers succumb to the temptation to increase output at
the higher prices. Non-oil commodity prices fell sharply in 1998, in part
in response to weaker global demand. As Mike noted, we do not expect
that disinflationary element to be present going forward.
The bottom two panels explain the elements of our forecast for core
import prices--that is the prices of goods other than oil, semiconductors,
and computers. We look for those prices, the red line, to move from
showing small declines to showing small increases by the end of the year.
Next year, core import prices should rise, but less than 2 percent for the
year as a whole. This acceleration in import prices owes to the
disappearance of the downward effect of global commodity prices, shown
as the bars in the left panel, and to a shift from downward to upward
pressure imparted by the combined effect of foreign prices and the
exchange rate, the bars in the right panel.
The top panels of Chart 12 decompose the elements of our forecast
for the quantities of core exports (goods excluding agricultural products,
semiconductors, and computers) and core imports (goods excluding oil,
semiconductors, and computers). For exports, we look for foreign GDP
growth to return to being a strong positive factor while the negative impact
of past dollar appreciation wanes and ceases to be important. For imports,
stimulus both from U.S. GDP growth and from relative prices (largely the
exchange rate) lessens over the forecast period; accordingly, we see core
import growth slowing to about 6 percent.

6/29-30/99

23

If all those pieces do fall into place, real net exports, the middle left
panel, will continue to exert a negative influence on U.S. real GDP growth
but to a diminishing extent. The nominal trade deficit will continue to
widen, however. And despite a boost from some revisions to data for our
investment position, and therefore some adjustments to estimates of flow
income, the current account deficit will continue to expand, reaching some
very large numbers. Relative to GDP, the current account balance is less
startling, but we anticipate that during the current year it will breach the
low reached in the late 1980s.
If global recovery proceeds more or less along the lines we have
suggested in the Greenbook, so that no new crisis elements command the
attention of markets, then the rapid pace at which the U.S. external deficit
is widening and the magnitudes that it is reaching may receive more
attention. We revisited our slightly more aggregated model that simulates
longer-term relationships. The continued strength of the dollar and the
relative cyclical strength of the U.S. economy over the past two years have
made the starting point of our analysis relatively unfavorable. Evidence
that the potential rate of growth of the United States has increased
recently, while that abroad has not, imparts an even greater sustained
tendency for the U.S. external deficit to widen over time than
conventionally accepted.
The panels at the bottom of the chart show the current account
relative to GDP, on the left, and the net international investment position
relative to GDP, on the right. The baseline assumes that both in the
United States and abroad, output returns in the near term to equal potential
and then grows at potential rates thereafter. We have also incorporated
some sustained real dollar depreciation into the baseline, 1½ percent at an
annual rate. Nevertheless, the baseline shows chronic widening of the
current account and deterioration of the net investment position.
Such an outcome implies the underlying variables are not mutually
consistent and some adjustment in one or more of them would be needed.
The parameters of this model, based on historical experience of the past
two decades, suggest that, were the adjustment to come solely through the
price competitiveness of U.S. goods, the real depreciation of the dollar
would have to average 4¼ percent per year in order for these ratios to
stabilize as shown by the red line. Alternatively, adjustment could come
from income channels rather than price channels. If foreign industrial
output were to move to a higher rate of potential growth, perhaps as a
consequence of some of the factors that have increased productivity in the
United States, and if U.S. imports were to shift over time to being less
responsive to U.S. income growth, then the adjustment path shown by the
blue line would result. Clearly, actual adjustment will likely entail both
channels. These results suggest to us that greater market attention to the

6/29-30/99

24

path for U.S. external balances is likely although the timing of that
attention is still uncertain.
Mike will now complete our presentation.
MR. PRELL. The final chart summarizes your forecasts. In short, the
central tendencies--constructed here by dropping the high three and low
three of the distributions for each variable--are closely in line with the
staff’s Greenbook numbers. Y2K effects are minimal.
Perhaps more interesting--and potentially more relevant in light of the
statutory requirement that the Humphrey-Hawkins report comment on the
relationship of the Fed’s monetary policy objectives to the Administration’s
forecast--is the comparison of your forecasts to those in the right-most
column of the table, drawn from yesterday’s Mid-session Review budget
document. Your central tendencies are noticeably more optimistic about
real GDP growth this year and next than they are, but little different with
respect to CPI inflation. I’m not in a position to read your minds or those
of the Administration forecasters. However, I’d note two things: First, it
would appear that the Administration forecasters have anticipated no
change in short-term rates, so monetary policy does not seem to be key to
their slower growth forecast; second, although they’ve raised their
assumption regarding trend productivity growth, at only 1.6 percent for
nonfarm businesses it lies well below the 2¼ percent implicit in the
Greenbook projection.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Thank you very much. Questions for our
colleagues? President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Mike, I have a question about the Y2K effects. The quarterly
impact of Y2K in the forecast is primarily an inventory effect. One gets the impression
that there could be some effect--I don’t know the size of it--that could work in an
opposite direction in the sense that we hear of companies postponing projects. Many
banks, for example, have delayed combining their data systems as they have merged, and
I imagine there probably are examples in other industries. The assumption at least is that
sometime in the year 2000, though perhaps not immediately, they are going to begin
those projects--and not all of them are IT projects. Is there the potential for a significant
reverse effect that we are not taking into account?
MR. PRELL. We have taken account of three categories of effects here. One is a
precautionary stockpiling, and we have a very modest amount of stockpiling occurring on
the part of both households and businesses. Businesses in many cases will want to have

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25

some extra supplies on hand beginning in 2000 just in case the normal supply channels
are disrupted. The second element is some disruption. There will probably be,
somewhere, some malfunctions--electrical outages or whatever--that disrupt some public
services at the beginning of next year. But again, we made the assumption that those will
be very minor and quickly resolved. The third set of considerations relates, I think, to the
point you are raising. In our case, we focused it entirely on the computer area. We have
assumed that the remarkable strength of computer purchases in 1998 and hefty purchases
in the first part of this year reflect in part some speeding up of replacement cycles to
replace non-compliant equipment. And we think there will be, at least in some firms, a
lockdown of computer systems in the latter part of this year, a falloff in computer outlays,
and probably a lot of scurrying around to get the last minute fixes done. So there may be
some subtraction from productivity on that score. Next year there will probably still be
some fixing up of glitches that are discovered early in the year. But as we move through
the year, we would anticipate a rebound in computer outlays and perhaps associated
investments as firms feel that they are in the clear and can go back to the normal
strategies for their companies.
We scaled all of these things, I think, pretty small. The computer swings are quite
marked, but I think the inventory question is really quite open at this point. Our sense is
that a lot of firms have not yet really settled their plans on how much they are going to
stockpile. They are still in contact with their suppliers, trying to get assurances that there
won’t be problems and trying to assess where the risks may be. We anticipate that they
will firm up those decisions over the next few months and, therefore, that most of the
inventory building will occur in the latter months of this year. That is when the
production effects will probably show up for the most part.
MR. PARRY. Okay.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Minehan.
MS. MINEHAN. I have a follow-up question to that. I know that the numbers
work out right and all of that, but the thought of having a first quarter with no growth that
seems to be driven to a large extent by a Y2K inventory swing just doesn’t feel right. I
recognize that we are going into a period of slowing growth around that time, so some
portion of the slowing reflects that. But to go from growth of something like 3.9 percent

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in Q4 1999 to something close to zero in the first quarter of next year just doesn’t square
with all the information that we have been gathering about where people are with Y2K.
We had a session on Y2K issues with a wide range of industries on Friday and we
invited the media. We had representatives from the electrical and telephone industries,
from supermarkets, police departments, and banks. We had the FAA there, too. The
theme was exactly the same in every single industry: Somewhere between 85 and 95
percent of their systems are Y2K compliant, ready to go just as ours are. And there is a
lot of near-term focus on both contingency plans and outreach. We had no trouble
getting the key people to come in and talk. We populated the audience with media
people, including some from cable television. I have seen television programs about
Y2K on the local cable stations almost ad nauseam since then. There is a lot of desire on
the part of these industries to get out the message that they are ready. We’ve seen some
Gallup poll surveys that tell us the more people know about the banking situation and so
forth the less they are likely to do strange things or think about doing strange things at
year-end.
So I am wondering whether--as cautious as I know you have been and as accurate
as I know the numbers are--we are really going to see that kind of swing over that short a
period of time as a consequence of Y2K.
MR. PRELL. I would just reiterate the thought that we have really very small
effects built in here. When they are annualized, they whip these numbers around. In the
recent NAPM survey at midyear, one of the questions asked of the purchasing managers
was what they might do. We tried to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations based
on those numbers. And I can tell you from just looking at that, in manufacturing
materials it is a multiple of the inventory effects we have built in here. If people begin to
get a little panicked--if they get stirred up by the end-of-the-world TV programs or
articles that undoubtedly will be offered in the closing months of this year--the $25 worth
of precautionary expenditures per household that we built into this forecast will be a
fraction of what will occur.
Now, some of this will just mean that stocks will run down in some places
because firms will not have produced enough to accommodate that demand, so it will all
come out in the wash here. But I think the potential is for even bigger swings than this.

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It may be that people will be sufficiently reassured only to take a few hundred dollars out
of their bank account, but that’s symbolic of the kind of concerns that will lead people to
do some other things as well. I guess I’m somewhat conditioned by my experience here
in Washington, D.C. when there is the slightest hint of a possible snowstorm and people
buy six months’ worth of toilet paper. People do get carried away at times. And for a
purchasing manager, the cost of ending up with a few extra materials on the shelf that can
be used up in the first weeks or months of 2000 is not very high as opposed to being short
in what is needed to keep the production lines running. So we are highlighting something
that potentially could make for a considerable amount of noise in the data. In terms of
your numbers and what we would be presenting to the Congress in the HumphreyHawkins report, on a fourth-quarter-to-fourth-quarter basis the effects are so small as to
be trivial. So I don’t think there is cause to make any big to-do about this other than to
highlight the bit of uncertainty that exists about what might occur at the end of the year.
MS. MINEHAN. I have one question on a different subject. On your Chart 4 on
financial fragility, when we measure debt levels against either the value of household
financial assets or household net worth or we look at corporate debt relative to measures
that incorporate the value of the stock market, are we kidding ourselves to some extent?
Shouldn’t we be looking at it against something that doesn’t take into account the value
of assets that, when they decline, might tend to weaken the positions that we think are
strong only because equity assets are so overvalued?
MR. PRELL. I think there is much to be said for that point, and that is why I
focused on the ratios I have here. I focused in these Survey of Consumer Finance runs on
proportions of payments to income, thinking that that represents people’s ongoing cash
flows. As I noted, for shareholders that may include some realized capital gains. But
even if the market goes down, I suspect some people in their panic might realize some
capital gains, so they will get some cash from that in some instances.
MS. MINEHAN. But hasn’t corporate debt as a percentage of GDP gotten fairly
sizable these days?
MR. PRELL. As a percent of GDP, sure. In the recent period, corporate debt has
been rising relatively rapidly. Again, it’s a question of what balance sheet ratios one
wants to look at. Many firms have a good deal of cash right now, so I don’t think the

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corporate balance sheet picture looks particularly troublesome. And I don’t think the
behavior of the rating agencies suggests that there has been any clear deterioration.
MS. MINEHAN. That certainly has not happened.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Poole.
MR. POOLE. On the Y2K issue, I don’t think there is any potentially important
event since I have been an economist about which we have less professional basis for
speculating. [Laughter] I really don’t. It seems to me that the role for us here is to
ensure that the things we say try to minimize the impact of this event. The kind of thing
we should say is that, based on everything we know about all the preparations that we
and everybody else have made, there is no reason for any rational consumer or any
rational business to do anything that is going to show up in the aggregate data.
MR. KELLEY. Go for it, Bill!
MR. POOLE. That is what I think we could offer as economists. As for trying to
speculate about things on which we have no professional knowledge, I just don’t know
what to say about them.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Further questions or comments?
MR. HOENIG. Karen, on your chart 12 entitled “U.S. Current Account to GDP
Ratio” what assumptions do you have for your baseline? How did you get the baseline?
MS. JOHNSON. The baseline starts with the Greenbook forecast and the initial
extension that is sort of implicit in the Bluebook.
MR. HOENIG. In the Bluebook, okay.
MS. JOHNSON. The baseline brings growth in activity abroad and in the United
States back to potential and then holds it at potential. That is of critical importance to this
particular model because the minute we decide what that growth rate is going to be and
multiply it times elasticities, we’ve answered a lot of the questions about what is going to
happen to trade. The elasticities are given so that there is no scope within this model for
any type of feedback between the factors that might be driving demographics or driving
savings and investments to change the propensities to import and to export. But we did
in the blue line sort of exogenously adjust those to see what would happen if we thought
there were reasons to believe that they might move back in a favorable direction. We
were addressing the questions of “how much would that have to be?” and “what would it

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look like if it happened?” But otherwise it’s our best guess of what potential is in the
different countries that we modeled, plus the Bluebook assumptions with respect to the
United States and a 1½ percent real appreciation of the dollar. Embedded in that also are
some assumptions about interest rates and the like that have to be there to flesh out the
current account.
MR. HOENIG. Refresh my memory, what is the import elasticity used in the
baseline?
MS. JOHNSON. For the United States it is approximately 2.
MR. HOENIG. Thank you.
MR. GRAMLICH. I had not seen the Administration forecast shown here. Is this
the growth forecast in the recent budget estimates that just came out in the newspapers
that added something like a trillion dollars to the surplus over a 10-year period? Given
the size of their addition to the surplus, their estimate of growth is very, very modest. So
by the FOMC’s standards even that would be an underestimate, right? Does all that
follow?
MR. PRELL. That’s what I was suggesting. These are the numbers from the
Mid-session Review that was published yesterday. They have characterized it as being in
line with the Blue Chip forecast and conservative.
MR. GRAMLICH. In point of fact it is quite a bit below the Blue Chip.
MR. PRELL. I don’t know what the longer-term numbers they might have from
the Blue Chip forecast look like. But I must say that they have tended to err on the low
side, I think publicly and purposely in their process, which makes some sense if they are
trying to be cautious about counting revenues. On the other hand, it may skew a fiscal
policy decision by suggesting that things are tighter than the numbers might otherwise
have indicated. There is clearly a political element in that decision.
MR. PARRY. They were on the low side in February, too, you know.
MR. PRELL. Yes, they’ve tended to be very, very low.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. One has to be a little careful about translating that
growth forecast into the surplus numbers because the so-called technical adjustments are
overwhelmingly important. It is quite possible--I don’t know if this is true, I’m just
saying it’s a possibility--that their GDP forecast can come in low and they overwhelm it

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by technical adjustments that would create a big surplus. So, we have to look at the
detail.
MR. PRELL. In fact, what little insight we have would suggest that their surplus
numbers look on the low side relative to ours in part because they put in higher
expenditure numbers than seem to be in train at this point, as opposed to it being simply
the difference in our economic assumptions.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. But they are making very significant projections
into the future.
MR. PRELL. Sure. Fortunately, we have not gotten into 15-year budget
forecasting yet.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I hope you don’t have to bite your tongue!
[Laughter] President Stern.
MR. STERN. Karen, I would like to go back to the baseline forecast on the
bottom of Chart 12 that Tom Hoenig mentioned. As I understand it, in those baseline
numbers you have the dollar depreciating mildly in real terms. If I understood Peter’s
litany of things that might come back to haunt us--having to do especially with the euro
and the yen--they seem to imply that the euro and the yen might both depreciate relative
to the dollar once market perceptions change. That is, the attitude right now may be that
the Japanese are succeeding in stabilizing the yen, but we don’t expect that to last. If that
is right, these numbers would look even worse, presumably.
MS. JOHNSON. Well, the model that is embedded in these two charts was put
together by the International Finance Division two years ago. And it came to somewhat
less fearsome conclusions because the dollar is two years’ worth of appreciation lower
now and we have not had two years of full-blown U.S. deficits piling up and so forth.
We said the same thing then, and in fact the world went completely the opposite way.
Even though we said then that the current account would begin to get alarming and the
projections were inevitable, the numbers have gone in the other direction for two years.
So there is no sense in which I mean this chart to be telling you what is going to happen
starting tomorrow.
MR. STERN. No, I understand that. That’s fine.

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MR. JOHNSON. I’m only flagging the problem that is out there, which is that to
the extent Japan’s economy turns down, there is some possibility that markets may react
negatively once the dust is all settled and what is really going on is clear. And if Japan
continues to drag its feet about some of the more important policy adjustments, we could
indeed see yet more years in which the problem in fact gets worse before it gets better.
MR. FISHER. If I could just clarify my comments, in the short run I am more
worried about a rapid yen appreciation such as the one we had in 1997-98--that kind of
episode that they’re currently bottling up. That’s not a forecast of where it will all come
out in the wash once the Japanese economy settles down. But it’s the oscillation of the
portfolio effect in and out of the Japanese financial sector--rushing out, rushing in--that
could give us a burst. That’s what they are resisting now, they think. So there’s just
more volatility there in the short run. In the long run I wouldn’t stake my bets there. The
weak euro/strong yen is the short-run scenario.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Any further questions? If not, why don’t we take a
short break for coffee.
[Coffee break]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Would somebody like to begin the round table
discussion? President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Twelfth District economy has
expanded at a solid pace in recent months, with growth accelerating from earlier in the
year. District payrolls increased at an average annual rate of 3¼ percent during April and
May, as rapid growth in some states more than offset a slight slowing in others. The
acceleration was dominated by California, where payrolls expanded at a 3¾ percent
average annual pace in April and May, well above the 2 percent pace of the first quarter.
Payrolls also grew rapidly in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. In Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and
Washington employment growth slowed in recent months, falling below the national pace
of growth. The construction and services sectors continue to be the strongest sectors of
the District economy. Employment growth in construction was particularly rapid, up by
10½ percent at an annual rate during the two months ended in May. The rate in the
services sector was 5¼ percent. District manufacturing payrolls have declined slowly in
1999, although employment has stabilized in recent months. Increased demand for

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computers, consumer electronics, and telecommunication products, as well as the
resurgence of many economies in Asia, are boosting sales and orders throughout the
high-tech manufacturing sector.
Although improved market conditions have yet to generate significant job
growth among District high-tech manufacturers, employment levels have stabilized and
output is rising. Thus far, productivity gains and increases in the average workweek have
allowed many high-tech manufacturers to meet production goals without boosting
employment. However, these firms will likely need to increase employment in the near
future since they anticipate an acceleration in the growth of sales and orders and most
have absorbed what had been excess capacity in their existing employment bases.
Turning to the national outlook, data since the last meeting have done little to
change our perception of the basic forces shaping the economy. In our forecast, demand
is expected to remain strong in the near term, allowing real output growth to average
more than 3 percent over the remainder of this year. However, recent increases in
interest rates combined with an expected flattening of the stock market should start
restraining demands toward the end of the year. Consequently, we expect real output
growth to slow to about 2¾ percent next year.
Recent high levels of demand have not translated into high inflation because of
the favorable developments on the supply side. Consequently, core CPI stands roughly
unchanged in our forecast. However, as I mentioned last time, the recent history of
forecast errors makes it hard to be very confident about any forecast of this split between
output growth and inflation. Because there is no way to determine the size or persistence
of the current supply shock at this point in time, it is really hard to tell how fast the
economy can grow without inflationary pressures.
Forecasts that utilize the level of the output gap can be quite misleading, as
illustrated by the staff papers distributed by Don Kohn. This uncertainty suggests placing
more emphasis on nominal GDP growth, which tends to internalize offsetting movements
in inflation and output growth. And its use as an indicator can be similar to the way we
used the monetary aggregates in the past. In this framework, the small deceleration in
annual spending growth over the last three years to a rate around 5 percent helps me to be
more reasonably optimistic about inflation. However, I am not completely comfortable

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with recent developments, as nominal GDP has grown at a 6½ percent rate over the last
two quarters. Thus, I will be watching the spending numbers carefully to determine
whether this is a one-time event or the beginning of a sustained increase in nominal
spending. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Hoenig.
MR. HOENIG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Kansas City District’s economy
remains quite solid, as I reported last time. Retail sales are well above year-ago levels.
Real estate sales and construction activity remain quite healthy. Manufacturing activity
actually shows some further signs of improving, following an earlier period of weakness.
Factory managers are reporting to us that capacity utilization is up considerably from
earlier months this year and nearly back to year-ago levels. Energy activity has
continued to improve in June according to our producers in the region. The farm
economy remains in a deep slump, and I would say that we are hearing increasing reports
from rural America that the farm downturn is beginning to hurt Main Street and that we
are going to see some repercussions on the banks.
Having said that, the labor market in our District remains extremely tight. The
District’s unemployment rate edged down to about 3½ percent this past month. And
there is now some additional anecdotal evidence that persistently tight labor markets are
limiting growth in some District areas. Just as one example, American West announced
it will move 180 jobs from the Kansas City area because it cannot find people to fill the
jobs there. Now, where they are going to move them to isn’t all that clear, but certainly
they can’t fill the jobs in the Kansas City area.
Turning to the national scene, I continue to expect the trend in economic activity
to moderate by the end of next year. For now, though, I foresee another year of strong
economic activity, with real GDP growing on average about 4 percent this year and
slowing to an average of just above 3 percent next year.
As for my views on the inflation outlook, I would note a couple of points. Similar
to what Bob Parry just said, my stronger forecast represents yet another upward revision
in the outlook. I notice in the consensus forecast that others share that view. I continue
to be impressed by the momentum of the U.S. economy as we make these adjustments,

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and I also continue to be impressed by the fact that the inflation numbers are still coming
in at a modest level.
Having said that, I still judge that the risks on the inflation outlook are on the
upside. First of all, as I have said before, the funds rate is 75 basis points less than it was
a year ago when the economy was already expanding at a fairly good pace. Since then,
the financial turmoil that occurred last fall has largely subsided, risk spreads are in fact
lower, and growth is projected to remain strong. So in that context, I think the stance of
monetary policy is accommodative. When one looks at M2 growth, while it has slowed
most recently, it remains relatively strong--increasing by about 8 percent over year-ago
levels. And as others have noted in a different context, there are some signs that inflation
expectations are rising. The inflation premium embedded in the Treasury inflationprotected securities has been rising since last fall. So, while recognizing that inflation is
modest, I believe there is some upside inflationary risk in the context of this very strong
economy right now.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Moskow.
MR. MOSKOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Business conditions in the Seventh
District remain quite good. Light motor vehicle sales in May matched their 12-year high
reached last December, and industry contacts suggest that June sales will exceed the
strong year-to-date sales pace of 16.4 million units. Net orders for medium and heavyduty trucks continue to run above long-run averages.
Commercial construction activity in Chicago has gained momentum in recent
months but with few signs of speculative activity. Lenders and investors are requiring
that 50 percent of office space be pre-leased, and that is one reason some previously
announced projects are not making it off the drafter’s table.
More generally, our manufacturing sector is still performing well. For example,
the Chicago Purchasing Managers survey results for June show the overall index moving
further above the 50 percent level, from 57.9 percent in May to 60 percent in June. That
survey is going to be released to the public tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Even the steel
industry reports a bit of improvement, as capacity utilization rates have risen noticeably
over the past few months, although they remain significantly below typical operating
levels.

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Moreover, as Tom Hoenig just mentioned, conditions in the ag sector generally
remain depressed, with no significant improvement likely for some time even with
improving conditions abroad. Nonetheless, our District labor markets are still extremely
tight. We spoke with contacts at two national temporary service firms headquartered in
our District and both reported continued difficulty in finding workers to satisfy clients’
demands. One contact even said that he had shifted all of his marketing expenditures to
finding workers and none to finding clients. Both firms also indicated that we have
passed the peak for Y2K-related hiring of technical personnel.
On the price side, we increasingly hear reports of price increases that stick, both
for final and intermediate goods. Auto dealers and some casual dining establishments
have been able to raise prices modestly, and a few retailers indicated that strong sales
results were not as dependent on promotional activity as before. The Chicago Purchasing
Managers Report for June again indicated that relatively more respondents were
experiencing increases in prices paid than declines. The prices paid component,
seasonally adjusted, went from 52.5 percent in May to 57.2 percent in June. That is the
fourth consecutive month above 50 percent, and it is the highest since December of 1997.
Before turning to our national outlook, I’d like to summarize some recent
discussions about productivity that we had at our Bank. At our most recent board of
directors meeting, which the Chairman attended, we heard some very optimistic
assessments of the prospects for e-commerce to increase productivity in several sectors of
the economy. Our directors reported on how advances in computer technology have
affected their particular companies and industries--manufacturing, retailing, banking and
services in particular--and on the potential for these technological advances to
fundamentally change the nature of our economy. The reports consistently noted that
technology has enhanced productivity pretty much across the board and that its potential
to yield further productivity improvements seems limitless.
On the other hand, at our Academic Advisory Council meeting one participant
presented a paper suggesting that the recent pickup in productivity growth is due only to:
(1) measurement changes; (2) the normal cyclical response of productivity; and (3)
acceleration of productivity growth in the computer industry itself--not in industries using
computers but in the information processing and equipment sector alone. The analysis

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suggests that productivity gains in the computer manufacturing sector have not spilled
over to the rest of the economy, at least in the data, casting some doubt on how
widespread productivity increases have been. Obviously, productivity growth is a key
issue confronting us today.
Turning to the national outlook, our views are reasonably similar to those in the
Greenbook. Our forecast for core CPI inflation is, however, a couple of tenths higher for
next year. More importantly, even with a tightening in policy similar to that assumed in
the Greenbook, we see further acceleration in inflation in 2001. So the upside risks
remain substantial. The downside risks, on the other hand, are considerably less than
those we faced when we last adjusted policy. Most of the news on the world economy is
suggesting more strength than previously expected. Moreover, risk spreads, while still
somewhat elevated, are back to more reasonable levels, and creditworthy borrowers are
finding financing. Meanwhile, the same factors that have been propelling the rapid
expansion of domestic demand--high income growth, high wealth levels, and high
consumer confidence--remain in place. So it seems to me that it’s the time to begin the
process of tightening policy.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Minehan.
MS. MINEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The New England economy
remains strong, with tight labor markets reportedly constraining business growth, and
strong residential and commercial real estate markets, particularly in the Boston
metropolitan area. In the words of one of the Bank’s directors, Boston is “absolutely
booming,” though this description likely does not apply equally to all cities in the
District.
In May, the total number of people employed in the region fell a bit from its April
level, but employment continues to expand at a pace that is higher than its long-term
trend. The unemployment rate remains well below the nation’s, although it has bounced
around a bit in some states and ended slightly higher in May than in April. After virtually
no growth in 1998, the region’s labor force in 1999 is growing in every state except
Massachusetts. Given all the stories one hears about hard-to-find labor, however, one has
to believe that these new entrants to the labor force do not have the skills for the jobs
being created.

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All of the Bank’s contacts recently have complained that hiring difficulties are
constraining growth. Technical staff have been hard to come by for some time, but job
vacancies seem to abound in every service and retail establishment. The job market for
summer teenage employment is strikingly good if my 17-year old and his friends are any
indication of that market. All of them don’t have minimum-wage jobs as compared with
the experience of my daughter and her friends a couple of years ago. In fact, my son is
now making $9 an hour for selling CDs, which he would probably do for free. [Laughter]
Moreover, we hear stories--and I know of actual examples--of temporary help
firms reaching out to teenagers who have keyboard skills and offering them $12 to $14
per hour to fill the vacancies the firms have during the summer. Our contacts with
temporary help firms more generally, like President Moskow’s, see business as good to
great, but with revenues constrained by a lack of workers. IT staff are hardest to come
by, as has been the case for a while. Some temporary help firms have broadened their
base of workers to light industrial staff simply because there is a better supply of lowwage workers; according to one contact, even former welfare recipients are getting
lucrative offers now.
Amazingly, wage and price increases continue to be moderate. Inflation as
measured by the CPI abated slightly in the Boston metropolitan area in recent months,
largely due to a more sizable decline in fuel costs locally than nationally. Wages in
manufacturing and retail are reported to be growing in the range of 3 to 5 percent this
year, even given the dearth of supply. Firms report that changes in organizational
structure and in non-wage job enhancements such as training are being pursued in favor
of wage increases.
Residential real estate prices for the region grew faster than for the nation as a
whole, and commercial real estate conditions are strong in several metropolitan areas.
Until quite recently, Boston enjoyed the lowest Class A office space vacancy rate in the
country and very low rates for Class B space as well. Rents for commercial space
continue to rise and now exceed those in both New York and San Francisco. While high
rates obviously mean profits for Boston building owners, they could also deter new or
expanding businesses from locating in Boston. Indeed, the latest data show downtown
vacancy rates have doubled from their extremely low level, though they continue to be

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below the national average. Assuming these data are not an aberration, there may be
some evidence of a cooling of demand at current price levels.
Turning to the national scene, our forecast--like those of others--is similar to the
Greenbook forecast. Economic activity is projected to slow this year and next as a result
of moderating growth in consumption due to buyer satiation and a waning wealth effect
from leveling stock market prices. Business investment also slows in our forecast,
especially for computers, and net exports exert a continuing though smaller drag.
Actually, in our forecast the growth in exports turns moderately positive this year, given
expectations about growth in foreign countries. In our view GDP growth in 1999, Q4
over Q4, will be about 3½ percent, not unlike the Greenbook, and will then decline to the
high 2 percent area in 2000. We, like the Board staff, have now provided for a slightly
higher growth potential for the economy at about 2¾ percent, at least for a period of time.
And in our view, growth in 2000 will slow to about that level and thus unemployment
will stay roughly flat. However, without a policy change, our forecast suggests that core
inflation could rise in 2000--as does the Greenbook forecast--but the increase is larger
and takes core price inflation to around 3 percent, which is clearly unacceptable in my
view.
Now, there is no doubt that this forecast is surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty.
Certainly all the papers we have received since the last meeting have pointed to the
various sources of that uncertainty and the reasons to be agnostic about projections of
both output gaps and inflationary growth. Indeed, when I look at our track record at the
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the track record of the Committee in general, we
have been underestimating growth and overestimating inflation for some period of time.
Perhaps our assessment of a positive output gap is wrong and later data will
provide ample evidence of why we’ve been seeing such low inflation. But perhaps later
data will confirm both our current assessment and our concern that temporary factors
have played a large role in the current run of economic good fortune. The effect of some
of these temporary factors is clearly waning. In particular, estimates of trade-weighted
external growth are rising for both 1999 and 2000, which should affect both the demand
for U.S. exports and the supply of excess capacity worldwide. Absent tighter policy,
financial imbalances now evidenced in high stock market PE ratios and in the sizable

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growth in corporate and personal debt, even though it’s affordable, may well deepen and
pose threats when policy does tighten or a slowdown occurs as a result of other factors.
Clearly, there are risks on the downside--the external deficit and the related low
saving rate, just to name a couple. But the upside risks of increased pressure on capacity
from worldwide growth and the potential for growing financial imbalances now seem
both greater and more pressing.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Broaddus.
MR. BROADDUS. For the sake of variety, let me reverse the usual order of my
regional comments and tell you that not everything is great in our District. We have two
problem sectors: agriculture and textiles. Agricultural and farm prices remain low for the
most part, as does farm income. That situation has been exacerbated most recently by a
drought; we have had very little rainfall. With respect to textiles, we continue to hear
reports of plant closings in Virginia and the Carolinas; most of the business is going to
Mexico. These closings depress the areas where these plants are located--and especially
in those three states that’s usually small towns--even though many laid-off textile
workers are able to find alternative employment in the currently very tight labor market.
Outside of these two sectors, though, it’s generally the same old story around our
region: robust consumer spending and housing activity, a revival in many manufacturing
industries, and continued exceptionally tight labor markets pretty much across the board.
According to the information we have--both anecdotal and a few hard numbers-­
consumer spending may actually have accelerated in our region in May and June. Car
sales and sales of appliances and other housing-related durable goods have been
particularly strong. A lot of that hefty household spending obviously is coming from
consumer borrowing. Some of our banking directors tell us that delinquencies are rising
and that they are seeing, and are more concerned about, consumer bankruptcies. So there
are some hints of imbalances in the market for consumer credit, at least in our area. But
the most significant imbalance that we have in our region clearly is still in labor markets,
especially for skilled and semi-skilled construction workers. Shortages of these workers
are widespread now, despite a fairly significant influx of guest workers from Canada and
especially Mexico into the Carolinas and Virginias. Some builders tell us that they are
actually turning away business because of this dearth of workers.

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Beyond skilled construction workers, many businesses tell us that it’s increasingly
hard to find reasonably competent entry-level workers for just about any business. We’re
told that some McDonald’s stores are now stuffing employment applications in the bag
with the burger and fries. We hear the same stories that Michael Moskow and Cathy
Minehan mentioned about the temp agencies. They have to scrape the barrel and it’s hard
to find anything resembling quality workers. Not surprisingly in this environment, we
hear an increasing number of anecdotal reports about more aggressive wage demands
than we’ve seen heretofore and some actual increases in wages in particular industries
and local areas.
I have a brief report about the First District for you, Cathy. One of our
economists has a close friend who has a house in the Boston area. The friend got an
estimate last year for an addition to his house but didn’t have the work done. He got an
estimate again just recently, a year later, and it’s up about 30 percent. That’s really
extraordinary!
On the national economy, I’ll be brief. I don’t have any special insights on the
outlook at this point. I was very pleased to see the May CPI report. Obviously, the April
CPI really scared me; if we had gotten a repeat of that in May, I would have been
concerned that we were behind the curve. I suspect a lot of other people would have been
concerned as well. So the May report was a relief, but I don’t think we’re out of danger
yet.
The Greenbook is projecting a fairly sizable deceleration in the growth of
domestic demand in the second quarter now ending and in the third quarter. I think the
staff makes a good case for this; I, too, expect some deceleration in demand. Heaven
knows, I hope we get some deceleration! But, frankly, I just don’t see much hard
evidence of it yet; certainly I don’t see it in my region. What I see is continued robust
household demand for goods, services, and housing, big increases in our trade deficits,
and help wanted signs all over the place. In short, we seem to have a fairly significant
overall macroeconomic imbalance currently. More specifically, I think we have a classic
case of excessive growth in domestic demand. I’m worried that we may well be fueling
that with an excessively accommodative monetary policy. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Guynn.

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MR. GUYNN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As is usually the case, conditions in
our region have changed only at the margin between meetings. Retail sales remain quite
healthy. A number of retailers are actually telling us that they expect the third quarter to
be as good as or even better than the second quarter.
As I’ve noted before, tourism is a particularly interesting part of our economy and
an area where we often get early signals of a turn in activity or of people’s outlooks. In
the tourism industry bookings remain strong; they are not growing quite as fast as they
were a year ago but are still at very high levels. This is the first time in a while in our
surveys of the District’s tourism people that we haven’t heard grumbling about the falloff
in visitors from Latin American, Canada, or Europe. There is a growing sense that there
may have been some overbuilding in new tourist attractions in the Orlando area. If you
haven’t been in the area for a while, come on down! [Laughter]
Construction is still at high levels. We are seeing some slowing in the rate of
growth in single family permits, but that’s offset by quite strong nonresidential
construction. We’ve recently heard new concerns about overbuilding in commercial
projects in Orlando. In oil and gas, the higher oil prices that have prevailed for a while
now have shown through in a modest uptick in drilling activity after a long period of
decline. That should pick up further if oil prices continue to hold at their current levels.
Our manufacturing activity, as measured by employment growth, may be a bit
less robust than for other District reports included in the Beigebook. Our importsensitive industries like apparel, paper, and primary metals have seen declines. At the
same time, there’s an optimism that we will begin to see, or may already be seeing, some
turnaround as the economies of our trading partners begin to improve.
An old story: Labor markets are still tight, and outsized wage increases are still
being reported, mostly in certain high-skilled jobs. A recent example of noticeably large
increases was at Ingalls Shipyard, where a three-year contract provides for a 16.3 percent
increase. Pricing pressures seem to have increased a bit at the margin since the last
meeting. As one our directors put it, many of the business people she talks to are
increasingly determined to pass on their cost increases. Health care is a good example in
our region. It’s an area where pressures are great and where we are seeing some
relatively large upward price adjustments.

who is a major

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homebuilder in the region, also reports that he has been able to pass through many of the
cost increases that he’s seen in the building trades.
On the national front, real GDP growth is still outpacing my expectations. Other
than the effects of oil and energy costs, measured inflation is not yet showing the upward
drift I thought we might see by now. Nevertheless, there have been some marginal
changes to the outlook in my view, suggesting our assessment that the inflation risks are
on the upside was in fact correct. Our GDP projections for most of the recently
depressed Latin American and developing Asian economies have been revised upward.
While the turnarounds have not yet been reflected in increases in U.S. exports and
commodity prices or in capital markets, we expect that the demands for and prices of real
goods and services and productive inputs will rise. This should reverse many of the
favorable shocks that have slowed U.S. real GDP growth and temporarily reduced the
rate of increase in prices. Furthermore, I see little on the domestic side to suggest that
there will be a significant slowing in domestic demand during the rest of this year.
Employment remains strong and consumer income and spending are up. Business
investment spending may slow some, but it appears likely to continue to run ahead of past
experience in a mature expansion.
Should the reversal of the positive external shocks occur as expected, that raises a
fundamental question about the overall stance of monetary policy. Would the associated
run-up in measured inflation reflect embedded inflation that has been temporarily masked
by a series of favorable events? Or would the increase be temporary due to the nature of
the fixed-weight inflation measures and the fact that only relative prices of energy and
commodities have increased?
In general, relative price movements aren’t inherently inflationary and they
should be permitted to play themselves out. Such price pressures would dissipate quickly
as real and financial resources are reallocated, as long as our policy stance prevents these
relative price adjustments from being passed on through the economy as a general price
level adjustment. However, if we persist in maintaining interest rates below what I
believe is likely to be their pre-shock equilibrium levels, we may inadvertently be
pursuing an easier and inherently inflationary monetary policy. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.

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CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Stern.
MR. STERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The District economy continues to
perform very well. Indicative of this, the unemployment rate in the Twin Cities
metropolitan area is now 1.6 percent. Actually, it has been at that level for several
months, so I don’t believe it’s an aberration. Estimates of the District unemployment rate
are harder to come by, but that rate is probably 3 percent or lower.
Residential construction activity is very strong. This probably will be a record
year for both homebuilding and sales in the Twin Cities area. Commercial construction
is also strong. Some of the national developers based in the Twin Cities tell us they are
seeing good business basically throughout the country. Consumer spending remains
healthy, tourism is doing fine, and manufacturing for the most part is doing fine.
Agriculture remains the blight on the landscape.
As far as the national economy is concerned, not surprisingly our VAR model
remains quite optimistic. My own view is similar. I might briefly comment on where I
think the risks don’t lie. I don’t think there is a risk of a precipitous slowing of domestic
aggregate demand; that seems very unlikely to me. The risks abroad relative to what we
thought six months or more ago clearly have diminished; indeed, we’ve already talked
today both about better performance materializing abroad and forecasts for economies
abroad being marked up. So I think in this environment we can concentrate on sustaining
the economic expansion by keeping inflation low.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Boehne.
MR. BOEHNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The economy in the Philadelphia
region continues to grow steadily, with tight labor markets and low inflation. The
outlook is for more of the same. Residential construction is strong, with prices rising
especially for upscale housing. Nonresidential construction is brisk but not booming.
Manufacturers report further gains and retailers are generally doing well. Hiring and
retaining skilled employees remain the major challenge. Although there are special
incentives for particular skills, the norm for annual wage increases is still mostly in the
3½ to 4 percent range and increases for unionized employees tend to fall in that range as
well.

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Turning to the nation, we are at the point in this remarkable expansion when the
risk of accelerating inflation has to be taken seriously. Raising the federal funds rate as
insurance against an overheating economy is largely a foregone conclusion at this
meeting.
The more important issue now is how to position ourselves going forward.
Credibly resisting inflation also means being a credible evaluator of the inflation threat.
To use an analogy, we need to be able to tell the difference between a wolf and the family
dog. Let’s be honest with ourselves: Current and pipeline indicators of inflation look
more like the family dog than a wolf, and our forecasting models have for several years
cried wolf when there has been no wolf. How well will a preemptive rationale for raising
the funds rate hold up with that kind of support? Going forward we need to position
ourselves so that we can evaluate the inflation risks on an ongoing basis and adjust
monetary policy accordingly rather than box ourselves in unnecessarily.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President McTeer.
MR. MCTEER. The pace of economic growth in the Eleventh District has
slowed somewhat in the last few months. Slower activity has been concentrated in three
areas: construction, energy, and exports, particularly exports to Mexico. Concerns about
overbuilding have surfaced recently, and construction activity of all types, both
residential and commercial, has dipped. Energy companies are behaving as though
current levels of oil and gas prices are not sustainable. Their slowness to boost the rig
count is probably driven in part by concerns about OPEC’s ability to restrain output.
Most OPEC member countries and others have not cut production to the full extent of
their agreement, and fiscal pressures may necessitate increased output, particularly by
Venezuela. Mexico seems to be having second thoughts about agreeing to restrain its oil
output. Mexico’s difficult fiscal situation has reduced its ability to raise spending on
public works, a practice that is common in the year prior to a presidential election. Next
year’s election is expected to be close, so the incentive to augment revenues from higher
oil production increases every day. Future oil prices will be determined by a race
between increased OPEC and Mexican cheating on output quotas and the growth of
world demand. Given the history of OPEC’s output production agreements, Texas oil
producers have good reason to remain cautious.

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Turning to the national scene and focusing on issues that are relevant to the policy
decision, I think what I’m going to do today is cry “dog.” [Laughter] Referring to Ed
Boehne’s foregone conclusion about what we are going to do tomorrow, what worries me
about that is that we may trigger an end to the grand experiment that we’ve been engaged
in without seeing how far it could go. We held back while output surged and
unemployment declined to below levels previously thought inflationary, but inflation
declined instead. And we’ve been rewarded with the lowest misery index in history. If
we end this experiment, whether we intend to or not, we will never know how far it could
have gone.
What has changed? We had the April CPI report. But what about the May
report? The twelve-month CPI, the headline number, has risen to converge with the core
rate, but the change over that twelve-month period was driven more by dropping off the
first month of the period than it was by anything that’s happened more recently. We’re
rightly worried about accelerating inflation, but we’re still in a deflationary world
environment. We still haven’t seen the end of the effects of the collapse of the iron
curtain--all the new consumers and workers entering the world economy for the first
time. Beyond the iron curtain, we’ve had the collapse of the curtain of protectionism in
Latin America. We’ve had globalization in general. We’ve had the Internet and the
convergence of technology. These are all deflationary forces.
On the issue of a preemptive move, we had preemption redemption in 1994, so
why not now? What’s different now? In 1994 we had inflation in the pipeline. Sensitive
commodity prices were rising rapidly throughout that year. Now they aren’t rising. They
are barely off their multiyear lows. Another important difference between 1994 and 1999
is that we began 1994 with the pedal to the metal. We had 3 percent nominal short-term
interest rates and about 3 percent inflation, yielding real short-term interest rates of zero.
Now we have a 4¾ percent federal funds rate and 2 percent inflation--or less by some
measures. So we have real short-term interest rates of about 3 percent now and maybe 4
percent real long-term interest rates. Asia has perhaps started to heal, which will remove
a deflationary force on our own economy. But, remember, commodity prices were
falling before the Asia crisis. Developments in Asia and Russia just accelerated the

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decline. The bulk of our price improvement in recent years came from lower import
prices due to the strong dollar, but the dollar is still pretty strong.
On the question of slack in our economy, the low unemployment rate suggests
that we have little or none. But the low capacity utilization rate, under 80 percent,
suggests otherwise. And our economists tell me that capacity utilization is a better
predictor of future inflation than unemployment. We should not forget the slack
elsewhere in the global economy: Asia still has slack, both in labor and manufacturing
capacity; Europe is weak and sluggish; and much of Latin America is still in recession.
If it’s real growth we’re worried about, I for one believe that rapid supply side
technology-driven real growth is disinflationary, not inflationary. But if you’re a strict
demand sider, take heart from the Dallas Fed’s recent forecast of real growth in the
second quarter. Our forecast was, believe it or not, 2.9 percent, and that was before our
staff saw the Greenbook. We’re really good at forecasting backwards! [Laughter] With
labor productivity growing an average 4 percent over the fourth quarter and the first
quarter, it could decline by half and still be 2 percent. Add on a 1 percent increase in
labor supply and that would give us noninflationary 3 percent growth for some time to
come.
Turning to Peter Fisher’s fourth point a while ago, I think the biggest argument
for tightening at this meeting is that so many of us have threatened it that the Committee
would probably lose face and lose credibility if it didn’t raise the funds rate by at least ¼
point. But even then, if we kept the asymmetric directive, I think the markets would
remain nervous and turbulent over the next Fed-watch period. If I had the deciding vote,
I probably would vote for a small tightening just because of the box we’re in. But since I
won’t have the deciding vote or even a key vote, I remain to be convinced.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Vice Chair.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Second
District’s economy remains strong, though growth has clearly slowed from its brisk firstquarter pace. There are no indications of broad-based price pressures. Employment in
the District grew at a 1½ percent annual rate in April and May, matching the first- quarter
pace but down from 2 percent in 1998. Retailers report that sales were strong in May and
early June, with less downward pressures on selling prices than earlier in the year. The

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housing market remains generally strong, though new construction has cooled from its
vigorous first-quarter pace. Manhattan’s office market has been stable in the second
quarter, with vacancy rates little changed and rents rising at a more subdued pace than in
1998. Purchasing managers indicate that manufacturing activity was mixed in May,
while there were reports of an upturn in commodity prices. Local banks report a dip in
loan demand, some tightening in lending standards, and ongoing declines in delinquency
rates.
The national economy, based on the most recent data, is continuing to grow
rapidly and without increased inflation, because productivity growth is not only
maintaining the approximately 3 percent level we have seen since late 1998 but if
anything is improving. Our read on the second quarter is that productivity may have
grown at an annual rate of 4 percent or even more.
As one of the later converts to the view that the economy is behaving remarkably
differently from the past, I think it is important to remind ourselves what we should
believe in and what we do not have to make any leap of faith to believe. To deny that the
economy has been showing much better productivity since 1995 is simply to deny the
facts. How long will this improved productivity last? At what level of improved
productivity will the economy settle? We do not know the answers to those questions.
Should this lack of certainty about the future confuse us in the present? I do not think it
should. We don’t have to know how long the productivity improvement will last nor at
what rate productivity will settle. Those answers will be known only in the future. We
don’t even know when. More importantly, we do not need to know.
Most of us believe that the lag in the effect of monetary policy is one to two years.
That is as far into the future as we need to peer. To try to look farther merely confuses us
and perhaps makes us unwilling to believe the reality that is staring us in the face. I can
see nothing that would alter my belief that productivity will rise at least 2½ percent
during the next one to two years. That means that the economy can enjoy noninflationary
growth well within the forecasts of the Greenbook or of the New York Reserve Bank.
We all say that labor markets are tight, but they have been tight for several years
and workers have been found--many of them in pockets of poverty where finding a good
job, or any job, was a forlorn hope. Should we be fighting that highly positive

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development for the good of the American people? I think not. And yet the American
public and markets everywhere are waiting for us to pounce on growth and job creation
and stifle them. Since I do not believe we should do that, I believe that our challenge is
to clarify our strategy--first to ourselves, then to the public and the markets.
The markets are spending their time psychoanalyzing this Committee rather than
analyzing the real world. That is highly counterproductive because it deprives our
nation’s economy of the balancing effects of the normal pulls of supply and demand in
financial markets. Never-ending heavy breathing by market watchers is convincing the
American people that we want to deprive them of inflation-free growth.
Clearly, the general posture of the Federal Reserve should always be to remain
highly alert to imbalances, to forces which could end sustainable growth. Our policy
regarding price stability on a continuing philosophical basis should be seen as symmetric,
as being against both deflation and inflation. Our strategy, on the other hand, should vary
with conditions. Deflation is sufficiently unlikely at this time that we should have a
strategic position of concern about inflation. But we should not be in a tactical position
of being constantly poised to attack an enemy that does not appear visible to me. We
need to find a way to tactical symmetry--to a position where we, the public, and the
markets think we are watchfully waiting but not looking for windmills to knock down.
Because of the public perception of where we are, I do not think we can achieve
tactical symmetry by taking no action at this meeting. However, when we discuss what
action to take in a later portion of the meeting, tomorrow morning, I am absolutely
convinced that it must take us to tactical symmetry, even against a strategic background
of concern about inflation. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Poole.
MR. POOLE. Mr. Chairman, it’s obvious that everyone around the table is
“chafing at the bit” to discuss policy, and I’m going to do my part to behave in a
disciplined fashion here by just discussing the outlook.
In the Eighth District the story is very simple; it’s the same old story. We’re
seeing exactly the same kinds of things that we have been seeing for a good number of
months now. I make a special point of trying to talk to my contacts about what seems to

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be different, what seems to be on the radar screen that hasn’t been there. My impression
is very clearly that firms are successfully managing their labor market pressures.
For example,

is very concerned about the labor market situation

for his company. He says that

its needed employees at the Louisville

hub. He says that the company is having a hard time all around the country--except in
Philadelphia, Ed, by the way. He says he’s having no problem in Philadelphia; I don’t
know why the situation there is different.

higher hiring referral

bonuses and retention bonuses. So, clearly, that company is concerned. On the other
hand,

who was quite concerned about his labor situation earlier in the

spring, says that now his folks are able to find labor pretty readily though they are behind
on IT staffing. What seems to be happening is that case-by-case firms are coming up
against the labor market pressures and they are able to manage the situation successfully.
Of course, managing the situation in some cases means that they are paying more wages
or retention bonuses or something, so there’s perhaps some up-creep in wages involved,
although obviously it is not showing up in the national statistics.
Another thing that has come on our radar screen is that our bank examiners are
expressing a little concern--I want to emphasize it’s a small degree of concern--about
loan administration in the banks. Credit demands are strong enough and loan officers are
in tight enough demand that our examiners have the sense that some of the banks they
examine are simply not able to have disciplined loan administration. So there may be a
bit of sloppiness in that area that could produce some problems later on. No one is very
concerned about it, but I mention it because it was the first time I really had heard about
that from our examiners.
We have the same situation in agriculture and so forth that has existed for some
time and has already been commented on by others, so I have nothing to add.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you. Several meetings with bankers in sixteen of the
western and northwestern counties of Ohio two weeks ago revealed somewhat of a
paradox in that area in terms of a very strong regional economy but simultaneously a very
vulnerable economy. It’s an area where manufacturing often runs double the national
average as a share of total employment; most of that is motor vehicle-related production.

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Auto companies and their various suppliers are by far the largest absolute employers
throughout that part of our region. So employment levels and personal income growth
are very high and spending growth has been exceptionally strong.
But bankers increasingly express their worries about personal bankruptcies; the
stories about people who were current and then suddenly file for bankruptcy have
returned. They say it is fairly common to have two adults in a household using the entire
paychecks from all four of their jobs, including all the overtime they could get, to service
their debts. So when there is a loss of one of the jobs or loss of overtime or illness or
divorce, then that’s it. They can no longer service the debts. One banker emphasized the
condition of his customers this way: He said he is not worried about withdrawals around
the time of the century date change because his customers don’t have any money in their
accounts to withdraw.
MS. MINEHAN. We have heard that, too!
MR. JORDAN. They said that their business customers continue to experience
difficulty hiring, especially for entry-level positions. The bankers said they are often
paying 18-year old teller trainees $11 to $12 an hour. Then they can’t hold the
inexperienced people long enough to take advantage of their productivity after the period
of training, but it has been impossible to recruit experienced people.
We also did a roundup of what was going on in tourism in the region, so if you
haven’t been there recently, come on up! [Laughter] Given that the south shore of Lake
Erie is a major tourist destination [laughter] and tourism companies are a big employer
there, we talked to people at Cedar Point, Geauga Lake, Sea World, and King’s Island
Park to see what they were doing. Ticket prices are typically up 10 to 15 percent this
year and these places are having a great deal of difficulty in recruiting employees. Cedar
Point had openings for 3,700 summer workers and in June they are running still about
200 short of their goal. They went to Europe, again hoping to recruit 500 workers as they
did last year, and were able to get only about 350. They increased the amount of
subsidies for housing and for employee and employee family discounts. And they
increased their season-end retention bonus by 50 percent; a worker receives $650 if he or
she stays the full 14 weeks of the summer season. We hear similar stories from the other
parks. Sea World and Geauga Lake contacts said that a significant number--about 1/5 of

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the total--of their concession stands haven’t been opened and probably will not open this
summer.
Bankers are reporting strong loan demand for all types of loans and in addition are
expressing concerns about credit quality. Some of our examiners also are starting to say
that they are seeing very early signs of things they are not comfortable with.
The ag sector is in very good shape in the sense that the planting was all done on
time, conditions for planting were excellent, and since then we’ve had just the right
amount of moisture and sunshine. So, as one said: All the farmers need to do now is sit
and wait for a drought or a flood someplace else! But even the low crop prices are not
restraining the price of farmland. One banker said that he has customers who recently
have been acquiring new land at $2,000 to $2,500 an acre that will not produce cash flow
of $1,000 an acre at current crop prices. So buyers are either counting on commodity
prices to go up or they plan to use the land for something else. I’m not sure what the
logic of that is. Also, for the first time in a while for us, we heard reports of foreign
investors--Swiss and Canadians in particular--buying farmlands or even raw wooded
lands. That may reflect capital preservation efforts on the part of some of the foreign
investors.
Our Small Business Advisory Council described commercial real estate activity,
particularly shopping centers, as booming. One referred to an “explosion” of orders in
the spring for hot tubs and in-ground and above-ground swimming pools. The problem is
that labor shortages make it difficult to get the work done. So he went to Miami to
recruit 20 workers, some with families--he claims they have green cards--and besides
moving them to Columbus, Ohio, he provided them with housing as well. We also heard
reports of rising medical costs, all of that usual thing.
In the building sector, we were told that framing contractors weren’t even bidding
on some proposed new projects. Additionally, for some projects they had planned to start
this summer it now looks as if they may not even start digging or preparing the sites. We
did hear some reports, especially in machine tools, of some new orders coming in from
Asia and Latin America. So that may be an early hint of positive developments there.
We were told that a number of fast food restaurants in both central and northwest
Ohio are often now open for drive-through business only. They don’t open the eat-in

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facility because of a lack of staff. So I assume that, quality adjusted, one might call that a
price increase.
A director in the national retail trade business said that this year is going to be
phenomenal and will go down as a banner year for retailer earnings. He said retailers are
worried that they are going to go into year-end with stocks that are too low to meet what
they think is going to be seasonally very strong demand for clothing and other
nondurables.
We heard a lot of reports of food processing costs--refrigeration, transportation,
container costs and so forth--rising fairly strongly. A director who specializes in
came into this year expecting 800 number and Internet sales for
all of 1999 to range between $300,000 and $400,000 but already had booked $5 million
in such sales in the first five months of this year. Whether that is a reflection of
aggregate demand or a shift in demand, I don’t know. She feels that discretionary
income is high and rising very rapidly.
Also, we heard reports that the structural steel industry is improving. Industry
contacts said, in fact, that right now order books are full through the third quarter and that
because of large construction projects, especially stadiums, they expect to finish the year
with a full book.
Turning to the national economy, I wouldn’t know what assumption to make
about the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year in any case. While
it is no doubt true that Y2K will foster some buying to accumulate stocks of various
nondurable goods in particular, I don’t know how I would go about making assumptions
regarding consumer behavior or business expenditures for durable goods or plant or
equipment or even recruiting and hiring decisions. If Y2K gets to be a media event with
the degree of hysteria or concern about the future on the order of what we saw in the fall
of 1990 looking toward Desert Storm and the Gulf War, we could have a very substantial
negative impulse in the fourth quarter. And we would have to wait to see if that then
reverses in the first quarter. I wouldn’t know how to quantify the magnitude of that. I
can see it going both ways. Also, if people want to enter the year-end period with a high
degree of liquidity, that does imply, other things the same, a slower rate of spending for

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something. So Y2K may influence the balance sheets and cash flows of firms as well as
of households in a way that I wouldn’t know how to put into a forecast.
I have commented over the last year, year-and-a-half about the very rapid growth
of personal income. In the spring of 1998 we were looking at Greenbook projections of
personal income decelerating into the 3½ to 4 percent range and it has run 1 to 1½
percentage points faster than that. And that’s great, as long as it stems from income that
people are really earning based on what it is they produce. I heard last week--and I
haven’t had a chance to follow-up to see if it can be documented--that right now we’re
experiencing an inflow on the order of 1 million workers a year from foreign countries,
augmenting the labor force. Now, as for how many of those are illegal and how many are
permanent, I don’t have any information. But the total is a very large number--much
larger than I would have thought--and it certainly would contribute to rapid personal
income growth.
We can see what the effect of the rapid growth of demand is on the domestic
economy and, of course, we can see it in the rapid growth of imports at a rate that I
certainly consider unsustainable. I take that as the strongest piece of evidence of excess
aggregate demand in the domestic economy, and at some point that surely has to be
reversed. So I do continue to be concerned about too much demand chasing what we’re
able to produce in the longer run in this economy.
I have a couple of comments on inflation. We continue to do research on various
measures of inflation: We track the median CPI; we’ve also been looking at the regular
CPI but using PCE weights. While the level of the latter measure may not be statistically
significant, it has moved up appreciably. In the first five months of this year it ran right
at 3 percent, even with the drop we had in May. Now, for the first time in a couple of
years, that measure is running ahead of both the regular CPI and the median CPI that we
track. So, that measure is another way of looking at the concerns about inflation that we
have. All I’m saying about it at this point is that it’s moving in an upward direction
compared to what it has done in the last two years.
One more comment on inflation numbers: We began a project some time ago,
and are building a track record now, with our own consumer price outlook surveys to
compare with the Michigan survey’s perceptions of current inflation and forecasts of

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future inflation. Our surveys have some different questions and a lot more detail in terms
of the breakdown on respondents. First, both perceptions of current inflation and
expectations about future inflation have moved up sharply. It’s the direction that’s
important, not the levels, as far as I’m concerned at this moment. Some of the
information that is starting to become available on the breakdown of income levels,
education levels, males versus females we’re not sure how to interpret. Consistently,
females’ perceptions of current inflation and future inflation run 1 to 1½ percentage
points ahead of males’ perceptions. We don’t have an explanation for it. We even break
the data down as to whether the respondent is a member of a household and whether he
or she is working or not working outside the home. So, without getting into too much
detail about levels right now, since the beginning of the year all of these measures have
turned upward in each successive survey.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Kelley.
MR. KELLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When the Committee made the third
of its three cuts last fall, which was the final one that brought the federal funds rate to the
level we have today, it was a close, difficult call. After a good deal of soul-searching,
that action was taken largely--and please excuse the use of this old war horse once again
--as an inexpensive insurance policy, which could easily be reversed if the economy
appeared to be too strong. Very soon thereafter what had at that time appeared on
balance to be financially driven downside risks began to migrate. For a while, the risks
appeared to be balanced, but more recently they seem to have moved ever more clearly to
the upside.
Two groups of factors seem to me to be driving this change. For one, the world
economy generally appears to have survived last fall’s financial crisis and to be
beginning to turn upward. This is a healthy and welcomed development, of course, but it
does cause problems for U.S. monetary policy because several things that have helped
our policy mix may well be changing. Our exports could increase, adding to already very
robust economic activity. World commodity prices could firm; indeed, oil already has
done so. The dollar’s foreign exchange value could begin to weaken, adding further to
exports and raising import prices in the United States. All of this is potentially
inflationary.

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Then there’s our remarkably strong economy, which should slow on its own but
so far has refused to do so. Consumer confidence is still sky high. Real wages are rising.
Wealth continues to grow. Despite the recent hesitancy, the Dow Jones industrial
average is up over 14 percent so far this year, and that’s not too shabby. Consumption
continues to increase at a rapid pace, led by the big-ticket cyclicals like autos and homes.
Inventories are low and are likely to be a short-term source of further strength.
Clearly, labor markets continue to tighten as the economy strains to keep up the
beat. So far, strong productivity growth has made it possible to do so without visible
inflationary pressures. But it seems to me that it would be a dangerous assumption to be
confident that this could go on indefinitely. Things have been and indeed remain
wonderful. But there are limits out there somewhere beyond which could lie serious
trouble.
Policy must, of course, focus one or more years out, not on today. And within the
context of that time frame, I think we’re quite possibly in the danger zone now and
should begin to respond.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Ferguson.
MR. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the obvious question
we’ve all been addressing or attempting to address in our own ways is: What has changed
since the last meeting? In some sense I think not much has changed since then. The
incoming data continue to point to vigorous growth, which may well be above trend and
therefore is of some concern, I think, to everybody around the table. Consumers are
clearly the major engine for this growth, as the recent personal income and consumption
data amply indicate. And while PCE growth may slow at some point, it is not slowing
yet.
The other side of this, as we all know, is that labor markets continue to be tight.
The unemployment rate has been at 4.2 or 4.3 percent for three or four quarters now.
That is starting perhaps, and I say perhaps, to spill over into compensation. Mike Prell’s
chart number 5 indicates that average hourly earnings of production workers decelerated
a bit over the last twelve months compared to the previous twelve months. But if one
looks more closely at the last three months--that is, the early part of this year--average

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hourly earnings seem to be picking up again to somewhere in the 4 percent range. This
obviously puts into stark relief the importance of ongoing improvements in productivity.
There is continuing evidence that businesses are investing heavily in productivityenhancing technologies. The recent shipments and orders data for communications
equipment remain on a steep uptrend, as do the orders and shipments of office and
computer equipment. The major issue, obviously, is whether or not this capital
deepening will translate into further increases in the rate of productivity growth. On this
issue I think there’s anecdotal evidence on both sides, but the jury is out.
Against this backdrop of ongoing labor market tightness, there are a couple of
conditions that may have changed. Here I’ll say nothing new but I will reiterate what
others have said. One change, obviously, is that the international environment is not as
threatening as it has been for much of the last eighteen months. The staff forecast clearly
shows some uptick. More importantly, in April our exports posted the first gain in six
months. Two industries where weak foreign demand has depressed shipments-­
construction machinery and metal working machinery--both posted sizable increases in
May. We’ve already talked a bit about commodity prices, so I will simply echo the view
that it seems as though commodity prices have bottomed out; the evidence is broader than
just the oil side of it.
Another perspective that I consider important is to look at how interest-sensitive
sectors of the economy are behaving. Purchases of durable goods posted some healthy
gains in May. I think the housing market is showing us a little of both strength and
weakness here. The information in front of us indicates that sales of new homes and
similarly sales of existing homes fell in May. But if one looks at more timely measures,
such as builders’ ratings of new home sales or applications for home mortgages, those
have risen from April through June. So in addition to the auto sales that Governor Kelley
referred to, there’s some evidence of strength in other interest-sensitive sectors.
As Vice Chairman McDonough indicated, however, we’re not here to slow
growth. Nor are we here to destroy jobs or to destroy wealth. We should be looking for
the earliest signs of inflation. We had a bit of a surprise in the CPI number for April, but
I think we were wise not to put too much weight on that; as the subsequent numbers
indicated, perhaps some of what we saw in April was a bit of a fluke. The early

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indicators of inflation are very hazy but all point in the same direction. I’ve talked about
commodity prices and average hourly earnings. In addition, Mike Prell brought to our
attention the PPI for intermediate materials, which moved up in March, April, and May-­
three upticks after declines in that index in each of the 10 previous months. There are a
number of anecdotal stories about faster increases in prices and wages, as we’ve heard
around the table. When I put all this together, it does seem to me prudent to take out a
little insurance--to use that phrase--but not to react more strongly than the incoming
information warrants. We can debate whether or not we see a wolf or a wolf in sheep’s
or dog’s clothing or even the family dog, whichever it may be. But speaking of clothing,
even in a balmy June it’s important that the emperor not be seen in public without clothes
whatsoever! [Laughter]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Try to top that, Governor Meyer!
MR. MEYER. That will be difficult!
I read the incoming data on demand and production as generally consistent with a
slowdown to about trend growth in the second quarter but not at all definitive on whether
we are in the process of a more sustained slowdown from the 4 percent rate of growth
experienced over the last three years.
On the inflation front, the last CPI report reduced concern that we are already
seeing a move toward higher inflation. But the recent pattern in CPI reports is consistent,
in my view, with the interpretation that core inflation has now stabilized and that,
therefore, the best inflation news is behind us. Concern that we may, in addition, be
poised for an uptrend in inflation going forward comes mainly from the labor market,
where there are some hints that demand pressures are now beginning to be felt in wage
changes. This is the tone of the Beigebook. We also have the upward revision to the
average hourly earning series and the rebound in the 3- and 6-month rates of increase in
average hourly earnings in the last several months relative to the 12-month increase,
following a period of deceleration. On top of this are reports of higher health insurance
costs that are expected to boost the employer benefits component of the ECI going
forward.
The change in the Greenbook forecast, while not dramatic, certainly is in the
direction of supporting the case for a higher federal funds rate target. While I thought the

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rhetoric of the Greenbook was modified somewhat more than the forecast, I appreciated
both changes. The 0.4 percentage point increase in core CPI in 2000 relative to 1999, the
2.7 percent core CPI inflation rate in the fourth quarter of 2000, and the momentum
toward still higher inflation thereafter are the central stories in the Greenbook. This is
consistent with my own concerns.
Now, at Humphrey-Hawkins meetings, the staff also offers an extended forecast.
This puts us in a better position to consider the longer-run path of monetary policy that is
consistent with our policy objectives, rather than focusing exclusively on the decision
about the target for the funds rate between today and the next FOMC meeting. This also
provides an opportunity to consider the inflation risks associated with initial conditions in
terms of current utilization rates and the prevailing momentum in economic growth.
Let me note some of the important features of this extended forecast. Despite the
50 basis point tightening over the Greenbook horizon and the cumulative 150 basis point
tightening over the extended forecast horizon, inflation moves up measurably. And the
rise in inflation may be steeper than it appears on the surface. The reference price index
is the PCE, which has been running and is expected to continue to run about ¾
percentage point below the CPI. The rise in the PCE inflation rate from just below 1½
percent this year to just above 2 percent by 2001 and to a peak later of about 2½ percent
translates into an increase in core CPI from 2 percent over the last 12 months to about 2¾
percent in 2001 and a peak of around 3¼ percent. Add another 0.6 to 0.7 to put this
number on a methodologically consistent basis with a 3.1 percent increase in core CPI
over 1995. I think this helps to underscore the point I made at the last meeting: That
there is a danger that we could squander a most extraordinary set of disinflationary forces
over the last several years and allow this episode to be a transition to higher rather than
lower inflation.
The Greenbook forecast and my own, of course, reflect key assumptions about
trend growth and NAIRU. Our forecasts have admittedly been very poor over the last
few years. There is no question that there is an unusual degree of uncertainty on all
counts. But the reasonable possibility of a significant rise in inflation is a concern that I
will weigh in my monetary policy position tomorrow morning.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Gramlich.

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MR. GRAMLICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’re being increasingly
admonished to fight inflation and not real growth. I wish it were that simple. Everybody
loves growth. It improves living standards and a consonant growth in overall liquidity
keeps inflation low. But even though growth is desirable, a nation can have too much of
a good thing. If there is little economic slack as measured, say, by unemployment and
discouraged workers, and if there are lags in monetary policy, the main way the Fed can
control inflation is to control growth--that is, to keep the prospective growth in aggregate
demand close to that of aggregate supply.
To make a judgment of whether it is close, we must rely on forecasts. Even with
an upward shift in productivity growth, a reasonable forecast for growth in aggregate
supply over the next few years is around 3 percent, perhaps a bit above. A forecast for
demand growth is harder to come by, and the staff’s has certainly not been perfect. But
the staff has learned from its misses and has incorporated those lessons into its new
forecasts, so I’m willing to assume that they are now probabilistically unbiased. The
baseline forecast that many of you referred to does already include a higher federal funds
rate. The version that I prefer of the staff forecasts assumes no change in the funds rate.
This shows that the forecast growth in aggregate demand is coming in above that of
aggregate supply. Even including the flat Y2K quarter, the average growth in real
aggregate demand in the unchanged funds rate version of the forecast is 3.3 percent over
the next year-and-a-half; taking out this flat quarter, it rises to 3.8 percent. The true
estimate is probably somewhere in between the two. This is not a huge supply/demand
imbalance, but I think there is some imbalance.
Since the forecast begins at a time when resources are tight, forecast inflation
gradually accelerates by about ½ point per year in 2000 as opposed to 1999, with more
acceleration in later years. Roughly the same pattern is shown in the Blue Chip forecast.
This acceleration has been a standard, though largely unrealized, feature of the forecast
for some time now. I’ve always been worried about it, but I’m getting a little more so
lately for five reasons. One is that the long-awaited natural slowdown in the U.S.
economy seems not to have materialized. Second, the world economy is beginning to
recover. Third, commodity prices have stopped dropping and may even be turning up.
Fourth, there are now more tight labor market anecdotes than before in the Beigebook

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and elsewhere. Fifth, there are early if intermittent signs of acceleration in prices and
even a touch in wages. After a long spell, it may now be time to worry about the gradual
acceleration of inflation and to think about tightening policy.
The same suggestion is given by targeting rules. A forward-looking inflation
targeting rule would tell us to tighten. A forward-looking nominal income targeting rule
would tell us to tighten. If the real interest rate is in the neighborhood of 3.8 percent,
which is taken from the possibly biased TIP market, the nominal funds rate is probably
too low from a long-term standpoint. None of these indicators is perfect, but all are
starting to point in the same direction.
Let me step ahead and talk about the “tap on the brakes” issue. Should there be a
slight tap on the brakes or a stronger tap? The argument for a slight tap is that there is
still a great deal of forecasting uncertainty in all of this and there is still time to make
future changes if new data confirm our suspicions. Until we see the whites of the eyes of
inflation, premature Fed moves do not let the new high productivity American economy
reach its full potential. The arguments for a stronger tap are that the present funds rate
may be too low by more than a slight amount, that it is difficult to raise interest rates, and
that there are lags both in monetary policy and in the inflation process. In being too
cautious and not taking advantage of windows of opportunity, delayed Fed moves let
inflation heat up again after years of painful sacrifice to bring it under control. I’m not
going to say where I am on this except to say that these were years of painful sacrifice.
[Laughter]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. We will now adjourn until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow
morning. Before we do, let me just remind you that the forecasts that you’ve submitted
to Mike Prell are subject to revision, as you know. He would appreciate having any
changes in your forecasts by close of business on Wednesday, July 7.
[Meeting recessed]

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Wednesday, June 30--Morning Session
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Mr. Madigan, you have the floor.
MR. MADIGAN. This briefing provides background for your review of the
ranges for money and debt for 1999 and your decision regarding provisional
ranges for 2000. I’ll be referring to the charts and tables from the Bluebook that
have been distributed separately to you this morning in a package labeled “Staff
Presentation on Money and Debt Ranges.” 3/
Last February, the FOMC reaffirmed the growth ranges for 1999 that were
chosen provisionally one year ago: 1 to 5 percent for M2, 2 to 6 percent for M3,
and 3 to 7 percent for domestic nonfinancial sector debt, shown in Chart 1. The
Humphrey-Hawkins report in February noted the FOMC’s continued uncertainty
regarding appropriate rates of money growth in the intermediate term and stated
that the Committee intended the monetary ranges to be benchmarks for growth
under conditions of price stability, sustainable economic growth, and historical
velocity relationships. In addition, the report pointed out that the monetary
aggregates could exceed their ranges during 1999.
As shown in the top panel of the chart, M2 has indeed been running above
its range so far this year, with growth through June at a 6¼ percent annual rate.
M3 growth for the year to date has been about 6 percent at an annual rate, just at
the top of its range. Debt, by contrast, has been comfortably within its range.
The relatively rapid expansion of M2 this year importantly reflects the
brisk pace of nominal income growth. In addition, it has mirrored a further
decline in V2, shown by the solid line in the top panel of Chart 2. To a small
degree, the decline in V2 over the first half of this year probably was a lagged
response to the drop in opportunity cost--the dashed line in the upper panel--late
in 1998 following the easings of monetary policy. In the middle panel, the lower
solid line, labeled “Fit from 1959:Q2 to 1989:Q4,” shows the historical
association between opportunity cost--the horizontal axis--and V2, the vertical
axis. Points corresponding to the experience over the period since mid-1994 are
shown in the box and are repeated in magnified form in the lower panel. That
scatterplot suggests that the demand for M2 may retain an interest sensitivity
somewhat similar to that apparent in earlier decades.
Since its peak in mid-1997, however, V2 has dropped considerably while
this measure of opportunity cost has changed little on net. We can’t pin down the
reasons for the downtrend, but it seems reasonable to suspect that wealth may be
playing a role. Large stock market gains have boosted wealth but have left
portfolios skewed toward equities. As investors, in response, have diversified
some of their wealth into other assets, such as deposits and money fund shares,
3

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

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M2 has been growing more quickly than nominal income. Nonetheless,
econometric studies have not identified a clear role for wealth in M2 demand, and
considerable uncertainty continues to surround the determinants of M2.
Chart 3 shows the velocity of M3 in the upper panel and the velocity of
debt in the lower panel. In 1999 V3 has continued to drop at a pace a bit quicker
than its trend from 1960 to 1985. The velocity of debt has remained roughly flat,
as was the case before the mid-1980s.
Table 1 summarizes the staff projections for 1999 and 2000. As shown in
the third column, M2 is projected to expand 6 percent over 1999, outpacing the
5¼ percent gain in nominal income forecast by the staff in the Greenbook and the
similar central tendency of income growth in your own forecasts. The projected
decline in V2 reflects an assumption of continued, albeit diminishing, portfolio
influences and a small boost to M2 demand from Y2K concerns. These effects
are partly offset by the assumed tightening of monetary policy this year. Next
year, M2 growth is expected to slow further to 5 percent, owing in part to the
deceleration in nominal income, which is anticipated by your own forecasts as
well as the Greenbook. A reversal of the Y2K effects and the continued fading of
the portfolio effect on money demand, given the projected leveling-out of the
stock market, also contribute to M2’s expected deceleration.
M3, the second line of the third column, is forecast to expand 6¼ percent
this year. The sharp slowing from last year’s pace of nearly 11 percent mainly
reflects a steep drop-off in bank credit growth after the surge that resulted from
last year’s market turmoil. Next year, M3 growth is seen as edging off to 6
percent, with the effects of the deceleration in M2 being partly offset by a
strengthening in bank funding needs as bank credit picks up some.
Domestic nonfinancial sector debt is projected to expand 5½ percent in
1999 and 4¼ percent next year, about in line with nominal income. The
contraction in federal debt steepens, owing to the widening budget surplus, while
nonfederal debt expands briskly, again outpacing nominal income, although it
does slow.
Table 2, on the following page, shows the two sets of ranges for money
and debt presented in the Bluebook for Committee consideration. Both sets were
developed under the presumption that the Committee would wish to retain its
current, long-run price-stability rationale for the monetary ranges and the current
projection rationale for the debt range.
Under Alternative I, the Committee would keep the existing ranges for
1999. The ranges for M2 and M3 under this alternative are centered on growth
rates that would likely prevail under conditions of price stability and historically
typical velocity behavior, with a trend in potential GDP more in line with
performance earlier in this decade--before the apparent recent improvements in

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productivity growth. For instance, the M2 range of 1 to 5 percent under
Alternative I would be consistent with potential real GDP growth of 2½ percent,
the staff estimate of ½ percentage point bias in inflation measured using the GDP
deflator, no true inflation, and flat V2. Under this alternative, the same monetary
ranges presumably would carry over to next year since the underlying
assumptions would be unchanged.
By contrast, the monetary ranges for Alternative II are designed to be
consistent with an expectation that the stronger productivity gains of the past year
or so will persist, with implications for more rapid growth in potential GDP. The
M2 range of 2 to 6 percent could be roughly consistent with potential GDP
growth of 3¼ percent, as in the Greenbook, the staff estimate of ½ percentage
point bias in inflation using the GDP deflator, near price stability, and flat V2.
For domestic nonfinancial sector debt, the Committee has not applied the
price-stability rationale but instead has selected a range that has been
approximately centered on its expected growth. Consistent with this approach,
both alternatives propose ranges for debt that are roughly centered on staff
projections. With the staff forecasting debt growth for this year of 5½ percent,
the existing 3 to 7 percent range would still be approximately centered on the
expected outcome. Given the staff’s projection of a slowdown in debt growth
next year to 4¼ percent, the Committee might want to consider reducing the debt
range to 2 to 6 percent on a provisional basis for 2000 as proposed in both
alternatives. As it happens, such a range would be the same as one based on price
stability considerations under the assumption of more rapid growth in potential
GDP that is the basis for the Alternative II monetary ranges.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Thank you. It strikes me that we have an
interesting dilemma, which is merely a variation of the ones we’ve had previously, and
that is to try to maintain a set of monetary growth ranges that we perceive as consistent
with price stability. That problem was easy to deal with when we were talking about
stable trend productivity growth; when that didn’t vary very much it was easily
interpretable into potential GDP and into specific money ranges. The issue that has been
raised here, obviously, is an important one. If our true evaluation were that we needed to
find the particular set of ranges that is consistent with price stability, the argument would
have to be that we should raise the ranges.
The only problem I have with doing so is that for some reason--mostly luck, I
guess--we have managed to take this whole issue off the table completely. If we change
the targets and we try to explain why, what of necessity is going to come out in the

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explanation is that we have changed our structural productivity growth measure from 1 to
2¼ percent, and that is something we have avoided doing.
I would be inclined to stay where we are, but in the Humphrey-Hawkins
testimony in which this is discussed allude to the fact--since there will be other elements
of the Humphrey-Hawkins report covering the issues of productivity and potential--that
clearly these are minimal targets. The language would somehow suggest that these are
not quite right but they’re not that important. Were we to change them, we would only
be changing them by a relatively small amount, which would not look all that much
different on the charts. If you visualize what we’re looking at, it’s really not going to
matter that much. All we would be doing if we change them, as far as I can see, is to
open us up to discussing what the staff’s trend productivity number is and then we’d get
involved in defending it or not defending it. I feel like the politician who spends most of
his time trying to avoid having certain questions asked. This is one of those questions I
would just as soon not have raised because I think there are differences of view among
the people in this room and it would serve no useful purpose of which I’m aware to get
into this discussion.
So, my personal preference is to stay where we are because I don’t see that much
has changed since the February meeting. Obviously, I don’t feel strongly about it
because one can’t feel strongly about this [laughter]--and we shouldn’t. That’s my
general view and I’d be curious to get reactions from everybody else.
MR. BOEHNE. I think your advice and recommendation are right on target. I
think we ought to keep this off the table. We have enough difficulties explaining where
we are and what we are trying to do with monetary policy; it would serve no purpose to
confuse matters with this unimportant issue now. So, I support your recommendation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Vice Chair.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Mr. Chairman, on this issue I feel strongly
only about one thing and that is that the fellow who has to go up and explain this should
have the option of deciding what he wishes to explain or not explain. Therefore, I
support fully your recommendation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I thank you, sir. President Moskow.

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MR. MOSKOW. Mr. Chairman, I agree completely. I don’t think it serves any
useful purpose to open this up to a wide range of discussion at this point. So, I agree with
your recommendation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Minehan.
MS. MINEHAN. I totally agree with your recommendation. There is one thing I
feel strongly about and that is not conveying the sense to the world that we have a settled
notion of what long-term trend productivity is now.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Meyer.
MR. MEYER. Mr. Chairman, I strongly support your views on this. Another
consideration, given the importance of the monetary aggregates in our decisionmaking, is
the less said about them the better. [Laughter]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you. I agree with your recommendation of not changing
the ranges. As far as discussing it in the Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, and perhaps as a
way to initiate more public dialogue about these issues, I would ask that some weight be
given to the idea that in industries where we know productivity gains have been
extraordinary--in the computer and communications industries, for example--prices are
falling, as they should. And the wealth gains to businesses and households are
manifested in an increase in the purchasing power of money because those prices are
falling. The idea of price stability more broadly means that we would then accept more
rapid increases in prices in other areas where there are no productivity gains so that the
average stays the same, and it’s not clear to me that that’s optimal.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. That is a very important point. In fact, that’s the
issue I raised last night with Eddie George: What is a true, stable price level? In other
words, is a stable price level one that is conceivably going down at a measurable and
known rate provided the rate of return on investment is stable? Obviously, price stability
per se becomes a much more complex question when we get into this technology area.
We’re using price stability, as best I can judge, as a general proxy with that caveat in it-­
at least I hope we are.
MR. JORDAN. I hope so, too!
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Gramlich.

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MR. GRAMLICH. I think the Vice Chair put it well. I support your
recommendation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Guynn.
MR. GUYNN. Mr. Chairman, I agree as well. In addition to the arguments
people have made, another matter is the timing. We may be in a period--we’ll see in a
few minutes--where we want to underscore our commitment to a low inflation policy.
And to raise the targets at that same time might send a message to some people that we
have a greater tolerance for-­
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. We would have to explain it.
MR. GUYNN. I certainly agree.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. I agree with your recommendation.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Stern.
MR. STERN. I, too, agree with the recommendation, although I do think this
raises an interesting question, mostly for the longer term. As a matter of logical
consistency, if we do become convinced at some point that trend productivity and
therefore trend output have accelerated, I think we are going to have to make an
adjustment. But I don’t think this is the point.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Ferguson.
MR. FERGUSON. Me too!
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. That’s ungrammatical! [Laughter]
MR. FERGUSON. I as well. [Laughter]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Well done! President Broaddus.
MR. BROADDUS. I as well.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President McTeer.
MR. MCTEER. Let sleeping wolves lie. [Laughter]
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Kelley.
MR. KELLEY. I concur, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Hoenig.
MR. HOENIG. Yes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Poole.

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MR. POOLE. Yes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Why don’t we have a single vote then? Will you
read the paragraph?
MR. BERNARD. This language is shown on page 21 of the Bluebook: “The
Federal Open Market Committee seeks monetary and financial conditions that will foster
price stability and promote sustainable growth in output. In furtherance of these
objectives, the Committee reaffirmed at this meeting the ranges it had established in
February for growth of M2 and M3 of 1 to 5 percent and 2 to 6 percent respectively,
measured from the fourth quarter of 1998 to the fourth quarter 1999. The range for
growth of total domestic nonfinancial debt was maintained at 3 to 7 percent for the year.
For 2000, the Committee agreed on a tentative basis to set the same ranges for growth of
the monetary aggregates and debt, measured from the fourth quarter of 1999 to the fourth
quarter of 2000. The behavior of the monetary aggregates will continue to be evaluated
in the light of progress toward price level stability, movements in their velocities, and
developments in the economy and financial markets.”
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Shall we vote?
MR. BERNARD.
Chairman Greenspan
Vice Chairman McDonough
President Boehne
Governor Ferguson
Governor Gramlich
Governor Kelley
President McTeer
Governor Meyer
President Moskow
President Stern

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Kohn.
MR. KOHN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The long-run strategies section of the
Bluebook highlighted two potential imbalances shaping the U.S. economic
outlook. One, the domestic saving/investment imbalance and the related current
account deficit, has been a continuing concern to policymakers. Although the
contrasting cyclical circumstances between the United States and the rest of the
world have exacerbated the current account deficit in recent years, the deficit and
the saving/investment imbalance importantly also reflect the pickup in
productivity growth here. That pickup has boosted wealth and permanent income,

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encouraging our residents to cut sharply their saving out of current income;
foreigners are willing to supply the added saving needed to fund domestic
investment because that investment has such high rates of return. The process is
not sustainable: In the United States, saving is so low that the wealth-to-income
ratio will begin to decline once capital gains abate; abroad, portfolios are
becoming increasingly weighted toward dollar assets. There is little monetary
policy can do to speed the adjustment. Tightening policy, for example, would
damp income but appreciate the dollar so as to have modest net effects on the
current account.
The issue for policymakers is what price changes will be put in motion as
this imbalance begins to correct itself. Once productivity growth levels out,
current income will begin to catch up to permanent income; and domestic saving
out of that current income will increase, reducing the equilibrium real interest rate
in the United States and the dollar’s real exchange rate. The latter would help to
sustain demand in the United States and to contain the current account deficit.
The role of monetary policy, if all goes smoothly, would be to lower the shortterm interest rate, following the equilibrium rate down. However, events do not
always go smoothly. There may be scope for alternative policies, depending on
the way the dollar falls and how foreign investors react and on cyclical
circumstances in the United States and foreign countries. Portfolio shifts away
from dollar assets, for example, would call for a firmer monetary policy, as would
downward pressure on the dollar from unexpected strength in foreign economies
and their interest rates.
The second imbalance highlighted in this section of the Bluebook has
more immediate monetary policy relevance--and that is the possible imbalance in
the labor markets. Behind the staff forecast and baseline extension is a judgment
that the unemployment rate is now about a percentage point below its sustainable
level and that the real federal funds rate is more than a half percentage point
below its equilibrium level. Structural productivity growth is projected to remain
at its recently elevated level of 2¼ percent. However, because productivity
growth does not accelerate further, the effects of the overstretched labor market
will begin to be felt. The rise in the nominal federal funds rate assumed for the
second half of 1999 only prevents the real funds rate from declining over the
forecast horizon. As a consequence, the imbalance in labor markets persists, and
inflation continues to accelerate in 2001.
The two long-run strategies presented in the Bluebook both deal with
the economic and policy disequilibrium by raising the nominal federal funds rate
1½ percentage points. If the increase is rapid, before inflation has a chance to
pick up much, the real funds rate rises quickly and by enough to put significant
slack in the economy, which counteracts the inflation pressures now in train and
ultimately produces price stability. If the increase in the nominal funds rate is
spread over three years, as in the baseline strategy, the pickup in inflation over
this period implies that the real funds rate rises more slowly and only by enough

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to return the unemployment rate to the NAIRU, capping PCE inflation at the 2½
percent level.
Revisions to the assumed NAIRU and to potential GDP growth have been
unusually large in recent years, responding in part to overprojections of inflation.
This experience suggests that uncertainty about the specifications of the supply
side of the economy in the staff forecast and its extension might be quite sizable.
The studies you received by Orphanides and by Orphanides, Porter, Reifschneider
and Tetlow highlighted the extent to which estimates of potential, and hence the
gap between actual and potential output, have been revised over the years. They
also addressed the influence on appropriate monetary policy of uncertainty about
the measurement of potential. They concluded that, because reacting appreciably
to mismeasured output gaps will tend to add to variations in both output and in
inflation, faced with such uncertainty you should reduce your response to
estimated output gaps, with the reduction increasing more than in proportion to
the degree of uncertainty. As the authors note, the Committee in fact appears to
have been doing this in the past two years. Except when you are extraordinarily
uncertain, however, the estimated gap should receive some weight in your policy
deliberations. One alternative in response to uncertainty is not giving the level of
the gap any weight in your policy reactions and instead paying attention only to
the growth rate of nominal GDP relative to a targeted growth rate, which reflects
a change in the output gap and inflation. This is a risk-averse strategy--very
similar to monetary targeting when velocity is well behaved--which may be less
than optimal, but would avoid large mistakes if the output gap turns out to be
substantially different than perceived when policy decisions are being made.
This research suggests that in a situation where the Committee is rather
uncertain about the true level of labor resource utilization, it might attach the
highest priority to seeking growth in the economy that would maintain the
prevailing level of labor utilization unless evidence begins to accumulate that this
level of utilization is inappropriate. To put this in practice in the current situation,
the Committee would want to set its policy stance to provide some assurance that
labor markets will not become tauter, but not necessarily to seek some easing of
labor market pressures. Under this cautious approach, however, if the Committee
began to see signs that cost and price pressures were emerging, tending to confirm
suspicions that the economy was producing beyond its potential, it would want to
react promptly and decisively.
The Committee would need to make the determination of how much
tightening is needed to bring the growth of aggregate demand back down in line
with the expansion of aggregate supply. In this regard, is taking back the 75 basis
points cumulative easing of last fall necessarily a good benchmark for policy
going forward? To be sure, the market disruptions and tightening credit
conditions that the easier policy was designed to offset have largely abated, and
the real funds rate remains lower than it was last summer despite only modest net
changes in unemployment and inflation rates since then. Moreover, when the

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Committee eased, it was motivated in part not by the most likely economic
forecast, but rather by the perception that the risks to that forecast were seriously
skewed toward the possibility of major disruptions in global financial markets and
foreign economies. The evening out of the distribution of those risks, without any
other change in the forecast, would argue for some firming of policy. Finally, a
reluctance to reverse course now, when market conditions have improved and
labor market imbalances threaten, might make the Committee more hesitant in
responding to rapidly deteriorating economic or financial conditions in the future.
So, changing circumstances since the Committee last eased do provide a
rationale for tightening, other things equal. But much has changed since last
summer, with complex implications for the inflation outlook. Notably, even more
rapid productivity growth has held inflation down despite a robust economy, and
in financial markets credit conditions and bond yields are higher, while on the
other side equity prices have risen as well. Moreover, the real funds rate last
summer was not necessarily at its optimal level. Just as in 1988, the degree of any
eventual firming should not be keyed to the size of the previous easing, but
presumably would depend on the economic situation and the Committee’s
objectives--and could be more or less than 75 basis points.
In the staff forecast, a fairly modest firming of the federal funds rate--50
basis points over the second half of the year--is sufficient to slow growth to a bit
below the rate of growth in potential output, at least for a while. If it turns out
that growth in potential output is higher because productivity continues to
accelerate, real GDP need not moderate so much to stabilize labor utilization. But
that more vigorous productivity performance will also likely induce stronger
demand growth than projected by the staff as profits and equity prices are
boosted. In that circumstance, some further policy firming may still be necessary
to keep labor markets from tightening.
Data becoming available since the last meeting do not suggest an economy
or inflation process gathering the sort of steam that would require a sizable
backup in rates to contain. In fact, economic expansion is estimated to have
slowed in the second quarter to around the pace of its potential. Though
compensation trends may be a bit less favorable than expected, 12-month changes
in average hourly earnings remain damped and CPI inflation is probably a little
lower than many on the Committee had feared at the last meeting. Financial
flows also do not suggest an accelerating pace of spending. Money growth seems
to be on a slightly slower track in recent months, even after allowing for the giveback of the surge of late last year, and credit growth continues to average in the
neighborhood of 6 percent. Moreover, the recent growth rates of aggregate
demand and of money and credit do not reflect the backup in interest rates of the
last two months, which is too recent to have had much effect yet.
Still, the signs of slowing are tentative, and, if labor markets are in the
process of tightening further, the longer the slowing is delayed, the more cost and

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price pressures will build. Under these circumstances, the substantial easing of
financial conditions that would follow a decision not to validate at least the first
policy-firming step already built into markets could be counterproductive. Hence,
even a cautious approach to preemptive policy might suggest a 25 basis point
increase in the federal funds rate to assure better that aggregate demand will rise
no faster than aggregate supply.
In addition to its decision about the stance of policy immediately after the
meeting, the Committee also needs to consider its posture going forward. Such
deliberations have always played a role at your meetings, but their importance has
been heightened by the Committee’s policy of giving a public rationale for its
action and by the option to announce changes in the tilt of the directive. Beyond
the action you choose today, there are three mechanisms available to convey your
message to financial markets: the wording of the accompanying announcement,
the tilt to the directive, and the tone of Chairman Greenspan’s HumphreyHawkins testimony in three weeks. How you mix and match from these
possibilities will importantly shape how markets react to your direct action and to
the data releases and other events in the weeks that follow.
If the Committee were concerned that a cautious approach to policy
firming posed unnecessary risks that inflation would end up higher than was
consistent with the good performance of the economy, it might see, and want to
indicate, the possibility of an appreciable increase in the federal funds rate. An
example is the price stability alternative and the incorporated 150 basis points of
tightening in relatively short order. Even if the Committee were not intent on
conducting policy over coming quarters to achieve literal price stability, it might
have doubts that a less aggressive policy, as in the baseline, would serve even to
cap the rise in inflation at a reasonable rate. These concerns would be heightened
if the Committee were skeptical that the growth of aggregate demand would slow
as in the staff forecast because, for example, such a slowdown depends on a
leveling out of equity prices. Furthermore, the Committee may have sufficient
confidence that a 4¼ percent unemployment rate is unsustainably low that it
wishes to take strong, prompt actions to ease pressures in the labor markets before
inflation begins to pick up.
In these circumstances, the Committee might want to consider a 50 basis
point increase in the intended federal funds rate, or a 25 basis point rise today
with the strong presumption of a like rise within a few months. Such sentiments
would be accurately reflected in an asymmetrical directive and perhaps in
heightened inflation concerns expressed in the associated announcement and
testimony. Any backup in rates this combination would cause would contribute to
achieving the Committee’s objective, given its view of the need for forceful
action to contain inflation.
The choice of the tilt in the directive is less clear-cut if the Committee
were to take a more measured approach to preemptive action in light of aggregate

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supply uncertainties. The Committee might still suspect that another tightening
will be needed this year just to align the growth of demand with that of supply, as
in the staff forecast. A reasonably strong presumption in this direction, and a
sense that such a tightening is a real possibility in the next few months might lead
the Committee to adopt an asymmetrical directive. The asymmetry would not
come as a surprise to market participants, who would examine the announcement
especially carefully for indications of whether your asymmetry extended beyond
the next firming.
But if the Committee saw that next action as somewhat uncertain--quite
dependent on incoming data and not a precursor to a more extended series of
firmings absent more concrete evidence of stronger oncoming inflation--it might
want to adopt an untilted directive. Such a directive might also have some appeal
because, by reducing the sense that action was imminent, it might help to forestall
a market dynamic that risked building in stronger expectations of near-term
firming than the Committee found comfortable. It would not preclude the
Committee’s giving its views that it continued to need to be especially wary of the
potential for increasing inflation. And the expression of such concerns in the
announcement and reinforced in the Chairman’s testimony would help to limit
any market rally that tended to emerge from moving to a balanced directive.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Questions for Don?
MR. MEYER. Could I ask about the change in the saving rate and the
equilibrium interest rate that you talked about in the earlier portion of your remarks?
Your comments seemed to imply that you do not perceive the current saving rate as the
ultimate equilibrium rate and that you believe saving is going to move back toward the
equilibrium rate. I’m wondering if that’s really true. As I look at the extended
simulations--and I can’t be sure of the data that I have--that’s not the story I see. To me
the story in the extended simulations is that we have a decline in the wealth-to-income
ratio and that the decline in that ratio leads to the readjustment of the saving rate. So it’s
really a question of whether the equity market is in equilibrium today. If the equity
market isn’t in equilibrium today, as it moves back into equilibrium it brings about that
change in the saving rate. Is that what’s going on?
MR. KOHN. I think it’s all part of the same phenomenon. The wealth-to-income
ratio declines for a couple of reasons. One is that equity prices don’t rise so rapidly
relative to current income. There is a projected flattening out in the next two years, as
you know, and very modest increases thereafter in the equity wealth-to-income ratio. But
it’s more than that because it’s not only the behavior of the stock market, it’s the fact that

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people are not saving enough out of current income. We, the residents of the United
States, are not buying enough of this wealth that’s being created to keep our wealth-toincome ratio from falling at the current saving rate. So I think what happens here is that
in a sense the growth in productivity levels out and this helps to level out the stock
market because we don’t have the continued capital gains and rise in profitability.
It also brings current income up to permanent income. All those things work
together to raise current saving out of income. So, the flattening of the stock market, the
leveling out of the growth rate of permanent income, the catch-up of the growth rate of
current income, and the increase in the saving rate are all a part of the same phenomenon,
which is basically the leveling out in the growth of productivity. I think one could look at
it either way: That the wealth-to-income ratio is falling and that’s why people save more,
or that the wealth-to-income ratio is falling in part because people save so little and that
induces them to increase their saving.
MR. MEYER. What about the equilibrium interest rate? We had some
discussions previously about the role of the increase in the productivity trend in raising
the equilibrium real interest rate. It levels out but at a higher level.
MR. KOHN. Right.
MR. MEYER. How do we sort that out in terms of what happens to the
equilibrium rate when all is said and done?
MR. KOHN. Well, when all is said and done, it ought to be at a higher rate than
it was four years ago.
MR. MEYER. Okay.
MR. KOHN. But it ought to be at a lower rate than it is currently given the low
rate of saving out of income and a very rapid rate of investment. As productivity growth
levels out, investment tends also to level out. So the equilibrium interest rate should be
lower later than it is now and on a downtrend as saving picks up, but at a level that’s
higher than it might have been 5 or 10 years ago.
MR. MEYER. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Hoenig.
MR. HOENIG. Don, I am going to try to ask this question clearly. In the
Bluebook and in your comments you touched on a couple of issues. One was whether we

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need to move 50 basis points over the course of this year and then how we might go
forward from there. My question is: If one were to assume for the moment that we will
need to move 50 basis points, what is the best way to go about that? If we say 25 basis
points now, assuming we move at all, that would create uncertainties regardless of the tilt
of the directive we adopt. A symmetric directive would give a false sense to the market
and to Main Street that we’re satisfied with that 25 basis points, and things would begin
artificially moving forward again. If we say 25 basis points, asymmetric, that would raise
uncertainty as to how much and when the next move will be. If we say 50 basis points,
symmetric--suggesting that is sufficient at least for now--would that create more
disruption because it’s larger than the market expects? Or would that settle the market in
the sense of saying, “This is what we’re doing and it’s enough”?
MR. KOHN. If you were confident that you needed to move 50 basis points and
it wasn’t really dependent on the incoming data over the next couple of months, I don’t
think there would be anything gained by doing 25 now and waiting to do 25 later. So, in
the case where you were confident that you needed to do 50 and didn’t want to see more
data, then you ought to do 50 and announce symmetry. I think initially the market would
be very surprised and there would be a reaction. Depending on the announcement, the
market might tend to build in a lot more tightening later. You would have to be very
clear in the announcement that this is it for a while, as the ECB tried to do. I think those
announcements are tricky. You don’t ever want to tie your hands for very long after
you’ve made a move. You don’t know what’s coming next.
The sort of in-between situation is the one where you’re fairly confident you need
to do 25 now and you’re not that confident about the next 25. If you’re reasonably
confident about the next 25 and see its likelihood as pretty high--it would take some
unusual data to dissuade you and you’re planning on doing the additional 25 at the next
meeting or the meeting after that--I think asymmetry would accurately represent your
views. The market would get wound up and build that tightening in, at least after its
experience during the last intermeeting period, especially if its expectations were
confirmed at this meeting. And that would be okay because in this in-between situation
you actually do intend to do that next 25. But if you were less certain--if you thought the
next 25 might be necessary but you weren’t sure when, and if it were highly dependent

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on the information you’d be getting over the next couple of months--then you might be
concerned that doing 25 plus putting in the asymmetry would end up creating
expectations of a further move. You would come to the August or October meeting with
these high expectations embedded in the market but you might not want to move and
you’d have given the market a false signal. The other option I tried to put on the table is
that of going to symmetry and trying to calm things down a little--not creating strong
expectations of a move at the next meeting. But in addition you could indicate in the
announcement and in the Humphrey-Hawkins testimony that your major concern was
still on the side that inflation pressures might be building and you might need to move.
You just weren’t so sure about that and, therefore, you didn’t put in the asymmetry.
MR. HOENIG. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Don, I have a question about the long-term simulations. Both of
them indicate that there is a lot to do in terms of policy in the next year or two to reach
our objectives. Since obviously we don’t have much detail here, I was interested in
hearing your views on the impacts of the alternative simulations relative to where we are
today on such things as the stock market, the bond market, the foreign exchange market,
and other vulnerable economies in the world. It seems to me that with the kind of policy
changes indicated in either of those alternatives, but particularly in the price stability one,
those impacts could be very significant. My experience would be that a long-run
simulation isn’t going to pick up much of that. The other point, somewhat on the other
side, is that if we moved according to the price stability alternative, it’s conceivable that
we could see the sacrifice ratio change as well because such a move would be a very
dramatic indication of our resolve with regard to monetary policy. As you put these
simulations together, did those kinds of considerations come up?
MR. KOHN. Let me take the second one first. We have built in a market
learning process in the price stability alternative. The public, not just the markets but
businesses and households, learn about this over about two years. So in some sense the
actual goal is phased in and then the markets’ learning about it is phased in. We smooth
that through, but it is there. So whatever the Committee is targeting, markets and
households do perceive it. It just gets built in gradually. The gradual adjustment of the

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funds rate differs from an even sharper increase in the funds rate in the near term that
would be indicated by the Taylor rule. So there is total credibility here. It happens over a
couple of years, but it’s built into the forecast. Unlike the old MPS model, which was
totally backward-looking, this has forward-looking expectations and the credibility
effects get built in.
MR. PARRY. I see.
MR. KOHN. It obviously includes effects on exchange rates and the stock market
and that sort of thing. But what it doesn’t include is some nonlinearity, shall we say. It
doesn’t take into account some unusual reactions that might occur because foreign
economies, say, or even domestic financial markets are unusually nervous or unsettled at
this point and might be more subject than they have been historically to a very sharp,
sudden move in Federal Reserve policy. Basically this builds in how all these markets
have reacted on average over time. We did not deviate from that. We did not in our
simulations take account of the fact that the current state of the world may not be equal to
the average over history and that reactions might be very much stronger in certain
situations.
MR. PARRY. Okay, thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you. Don, the discussion about wealth, permanent
income, measures of income and savings and all that in a domestic context is certainly
very important. We’re seeing more focus not on the creation of wealth but on the sharing
of the wealth in a domestic context. We saw in the Chairman’s JEC testimony recently
some questions related to that--for example, is everybody participating equally? These
are important comments, politically driven important comments. When the context is
broadened to the global economy, the issues become much more complex in that the
United States has been creating a great deal of wealth in recent years. We have our own
interests about sharing the wealth and the distribution of income. But in a global context,
in most of the places where we look at wealth and measure it we would say that they have
been destroying wealth. The effect of the destruction has been most severe on those with
lower incomes--Latin America, Asia, and so on--worsening their income distribution.

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Now, suppose the rest of the world, not only the old industrial world of Europe
but Asia and Latin America, starts to get its act together a bit, or maybe a lot--whether
that involves the enforcement of property rights, tax reform, tax reduction, or
deregulation--and they start getting the keys right to create wealth. Suppose they also
address some of their other problems about the distribution and sharing of that wealth.
Under circumstances where the rest of the world finally starts to perform well, what
implications do you see for the United States?
MR. KOHN. This is similar, in my mind, to what Karen was showing in the
Chart Show yesterday--that is, the possibility of a portfolio shift in which dollar assets
become less attractive relative to foreign assets, not because dollar assets are less
attractive but because foreign assets are more attractive. From your perspective on the
Committee, this might tend to accentuate any decline in the dollar. It would look like a
portfolio shift against the dollar. In fact, it would be a shift in favor of foreign assets, but
it would be a relative portfolio shift. It would put downward pressure on the dollar. And
perhaps even in this very benign scenario of rising saving and downward pressure on
equilibrium interest rates in the United States it would mean that you would need to have
a less marked easing of policy as things corrected, or even a tightening of policy.
Obviously from a global perspective this would be a positive development for the
world. But it would mean that the United States would stand out less from the rest of the
world than it has over the last few years. And I think portfolio preferences would shift as
a consequence, and that would have an implication on our forecast--perhaps, as I say,
accelerating the downward movement of the dollar.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Moskow.
MR. MOSKOW. Don, I think we all feel that probably the most important thing
this Committee has going for it is our credibility, the credibility of the Chairman. I was
wondering about the effects on our credibility if we took the last option that you
presented--if we went up 25 basis points and returned to symmetry--but soon felt that we
had to raise rates further. If the inflation numbers in the coming months start to
deteriorate and we feel that we have to increase rates, we would be doing so from a
symmetrical directive not an asymmetrical one. Are you concerned at all that a

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symmetrical directive would affect our credibility in the marketplace when right now
they’re assuming that we will have more than one increase this year?
MR. KOHN. President Moskow, I don’t think I am concerned if your concerns
and your outlook are accurately expressed in the announcement and the Chairman’s
testimony. That is, you could move to symmetry but still express the view that the major
development you’re most concerned about that would threaten the good performance of
the U.S. economy would be a pickup in inflation. You would indicate that you will be
especially alert for that, but you don’t have enough confidence that such a pickup is
coming along to be able to say there’s a high probability of moving at the next meeting or
the meeting thereafter, which retaining asymmetry might imply. So I don’t see a
credibility problem with going to symmetry, provided the accompanying explanations
express your concerns. There’s nothing about symmetry that means you can’t move if
the information that comes in suggests that you need to move. The Committee has
frequently taken policy actions from symmetrical directives. If the markets are surprised,
so be it. The most important thing you do, obviously, is to make monetary policy. That
you can prepare the markets and be accurate forecasters and tell them where the risks are
coming from is a nice bonus. If you’re right, that will help markets react in a stabilizing
way consistent with your concerns. It’s quite possible that you will expect one thing and
something else will happen, but you could still react. I don’t see symmetry and then
action from symmetry as doing anything to the Federal Reserve’s credibility, assuming
the Committee gave an honest and full explanation of its assessment of the risks. And
perhaps the nuances involved in that assessment could be conveyed better in that way
than through the symmetry/asymmetry on/off switch.
MR. MOSKOW. You obviously don’t feel that the very strong reaction to the tilt
announcement at the last meeting changes the historical view of how people look at our
making a move from symmetry.
MR. KOHN. My concern actually would be the other way. After you announced
your tilted directive, a lot of observers noted that it had had very little meaning in the
past--that only a small proportion of such directives had actually led to a tightening. But
somehow that tilt put the spotlight on the Federal Reserve. And the interaction of that
asymmetry and the statements coming from the Federal Reserve built in a much stronger

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presumption of tightening than I think most of the Committee members had in mind
when you made that move in May. So in some sense your concern might be that
announcing an asymmetrical directive would provoke a market reaction that would not be
consistent with how you plan to approach your next couple of meetings. I think an
announcement of asymmetry has a problem also in terms of potentially misleading the
markets about how you view your policy stance.
MR. JORDAN. May I ask a follow-up question on that?
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Go ahead.
MR. JORDAN. Maybe this question is for Peter Fisher since it has to do with the
markets; I don’t know. Wouldn’t a switch to symmetry suggest that the risks are in fact
balanced?
MR. KOHN. My view is that you can give a sense that the risks are not balanced,
but they’re just not so unbalanced that you see a high probability of action at the next
meeting. Yes, we’re slicing the baloney very thin here! [Laughter] I think the
Committee is in a very difficult position. The attention on its statements has become very
intense; each word is examined. It’s very, very hard to convey accurately the subtleties
of a position where future actions are highly data-dependent. Yes, you think the next
action is more likely to be a tightening than an easing, but you’re not sure when. That’s
the information the markets are looking for and that’s the sort of thing that used to be
conveyed in the minutes and the Humphrey-Hawkins testimony. That is now conveyed in
the announcements and the publication of the symmetries, but you have less opportunity
to explain the nuances--to say on the one hand or on the other hand. So the Committee is
in a difficult position. It is a position, I guess, in which you might argue that neither
symmetry nor asymmetry, as the markets potentially see it, accurately represents your
perspective. Given the potential reactions to the announcements, the question is how to
walk through that minefield, how to least mislead market participants.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Vice Chair.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Don, even though in the 1994-1995 period
we didn’t announce a tilt until after the following meeting, do I remember correctly that
we did seven consecutive firming moves and that each and every one of them was from a
symmetric directive?

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MR. KOHN. I know that we went to symmetry after each move. I’m not sure of
the subsequent moves because they weren’t at every meeting. Sometimes we skipped a
meeting. I don’t know. Norm Bernard, do you know whether the subsequent moves
were from a symmetric directive? I know that every tightening was accompanied by a
shift to symmetry but I’m not sure whether there was a shift to asymmetry in the interim.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. And the world didn’t think that we had
stopped being a responsible central bank just because we went to a symmetric directive?
That’s a question!
MR. KOHN. I guess not! [Laughter]
SPEAKER(?). That’s a good answer.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Don, do you believe that the markets in the future will view a
change in symmetry as a change in policy?
MR. KOHN. I’d say they would view a change from a symmetrical to an
asymmetrical directive as being a strong forecast of the next move. I guess one concern
would be that they might come to interpret it as a stronger forecast than the Committee
intended. Now, this may come out of the Committee’s attempt to retain as a policy
choice the option of asymmetry that wouldn’t necessarily be published. In the process of
explaining the Committee’s policy on announcing tilts in the directive, we said the
Committee would only publish strong asymmetries. The markets perhaps reacted to that,
which may have made it worse. Peter Fisher’s chart yesterday I thought was revealing.
Bond rates actually went down in the week after the asymmetry was published. So the
publication of the asymmetry per se didn’t build in this tightening. I don’t have a fed
funds futures table in front of me, but my memory is that those futures moved a couple of
basis points--3, 4, or 5 basis points on the publication--but didn’t do much thereafter, or
may even have come off a little. I think the publication of the asymmetry interacted with
subsequent events to build this tightening in; it put more attention on the statements of
the Chairman and other Committee members and then that built in the tightening.
Now, what we don’t know is what the markets will read from this last
intermeeting period if, in fact, the Committee tightens today. We don’t know whether
they’ll say: “See, we were right; you published asymmetry and then you tightened.” If

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there were a couple of instances where you went to asymmetric directives, published
those asymmetric directives and didn’t tighten, I think the market over time would learn
that asymmetry isn’t necessarily a serious indication of an imminent policy move. But
you would have to be willing to live with markets building in something, then taking it
out, which isn’t awful if you want to retain the asymmetry as a softer indication of the
balance of risks. But I think it would involve a learning process for the markets.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Any further questions for Don?
MR. BROADDUS. I have just one quick question and perhaps I should direct it
to Peter Fisher. Peter, is there any active discussion--and if so, to what degree--that
market participants are looking at the symmetry/asymmetry decision as opposed to the
move itself at this meeting? How much explicit discussion is there of that?
MR. FISHER. I think a great deal of the markets’ attention over the last couple of
weeks has not been on how many basis points the Fed will move at this meeting but on
what the wording of the announcement will be and whether there will be symmetry. Our
traders have responded to foreign central banks wanting to know the rules this Committee
follows in deciding whether to say something about symmetry or not. The whole world
is really interested in the second part of the announcement
MR. BROADDUS. That’s what I thought. I just wanted to make sure.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. They are interested in the process.
MR. KOHN. I think the more general point, President Broaddus, is that what the
world is really interested in is the Committee’s views of where it is going from here.
They have the 25 basis points built in. Now they want whatever clues they can get about
where you are going; the symmetry/asymmetry is a clue but it may not be the only one.
MR. BROADDUS. I’m trying to figure out how to do that.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Any further questions for Don? If not, let me get
started by saying that I think we have to move at this meeting, but before I comment on
that I would like to bring a much broader issue into the discussion. The reason is that, at
least from my point of view, that issue comes to grips with a number of the crucial
questions that we have to answer in order to get an effective policy. We would like to go
where the economy and the financial system suggest we ought to go, whereas everybody
else is looking merely at where they think we are going irrespective of why.

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At the last meeting, I thought I saw signs that the surge of cost-cutting and hence
productivity acceleration were beginning to crest. I was mistaken. After a short hiatus of
continuous upward revisions of company five-year earnings expectations, the upward
revisions resumed late last year and, if anything, have accelerated. The forecasts this
month of five-year cyclically adjusted growth of expected earnings per share for the S&P
500 are a full ½ percentage point higher than late last fall. I can’t say that I believe the
rate of long-term annual earnings has truly shifted up ½ percentage point in so short a
time frame, only that companies are telling security analysts that that is the case. Some
of this revision surely reflects a pickup in projections of foreign affiliate earnings in
Europe, Japan, and developing Asia where those data have been showing some strength
in the most recent quarters, but most of the pickup of necessity reflects domestic
earnings.
There is little evidence that the explanation is a change in long-term price
forecasts. Indeed, the forecasts have been holding for quite a long period of time to the
notion that there is no “pricing power.” Nor is it an upward revision in long-term
population growth; that I am almost certain is true. Further, it probably does not reflect a
major increase in the share of profits relative to wages.
What we are observing in the earnings forecast series, as best I can judge from a
disaggregation of these numbers that was carried out in considerable detail, is the
statistical reflection of the anecdotal evidence of dramatic breakthroughs in information
technology and most recently the surge of Internet applications. The presentation last
week to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago was one of many that I have
heard in the last several months on this issue. What I found particularly interesting in the
discussion that Mike Moskow organized was the concern going forward of
regarding indications that Internet commerce suddenly appeared to be
accelerating. Very substantial actions were going to be required on the part of
counter the competition coming from this very different, low-cost distribution system.
is in the process of making a major shift from its conventional
“brick and mortar” stores toward the Internet and related technologies, with very
profound effects on its employment. And while we are acutely aware of the very
dramatic changes in productivity that have occurred in the manufacturing area as a

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consequence of just-in-time inventory management and capital flexibility, it is less clear
how much of that has been happening in the distribution sector. But it now seems, on the
basis of a number of very recent reports, that we are seeing an acceleration of activity in
this area that suggests the early development of some form of critical mass that will
enhance productivity in the distribution sector over time.
I am not sure whether the 4 percent annual rate of increase in productivity
estimated by the New York Bank for the second quarter is right, but we do have fairly
good evidence that manufacturing productivity in the second quarter has accelerated quite
significantly from the most recent trends. Indeed, if we take what we reasonably know
about manufacturing productivity, the number in the Greenbook for the second quarter
for nonfarm productivity growth implies that either nonfinancial, nonmanufacturing
corporate productivity growth is down sharply or, as I suspect, noncorporate productivity
is negative--or some combination of both. In short, the possibility that our Greenbook’s
second-quarter nonfarm productivity estimate is on the low side, given the harder
numbers for manufacturing, is not to be dismissed. So while your 4 percent number,
President McDonough, was probably grabbed out of the air, more or less, it may well turn
out to be correct.
Algebraically, the percentage increase in long-term expected earnings in the
context of a stable long-term profit-to-wage relationship is equal to the sum of the
expected inflation, the expected percentage rise in aggregate hours or population,
depending on the way one may want to look at it, plus the expected percentage increase
in productivity. It is not likely that the upward revisions in forecast earnings since late
last year reflect revisions in expected inflation or population growth. And assuming the
earnings of foreign affiliates are not distorting this picture too much, the implicit
revisions in earnings forecasts that are being reported by business firms seemingly reflect
the equivalent of a ½ percentage point rise over the past several months in the expected
trend productivity growth rate. Now, I’m not saying that they are right. I’m merely
indicating what the broad sum of anecdotal information filtering into a large number of
security analysts who are evaluating S&P 500 companies is in effect saying. This raises,
in my judgment, some really important questions.

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Our Greenbook forecasters have chosen to use the same trend growth rate for all
quarters of their forecasts. They have always done that. It’s automatic. They don’t make
a distinction from one quarter to the next even though I would suspect that when we look
back on this period, we are going to get a nonlinear, or more exactly an accelerating,
longer-term growth path as the only way to fit the data. With the econometric structure
we employ, an unchanging productivity trend algebraically requires inflation to
accelerate if we have an estimated NAIRU that is above the unemployment rate, which
we do. If trend productivity is accelerating, however, the forecast inflation rate can
stabilize or even fall. So the implicit forecast of rising inflation that we have had in all of
our discussions this morning logically requires that the productivity growth rate be stable
or at least accelerate only very modestly. Does the funds rate need to be increased by 50
or 75 basis points as is indicated in the Greenbook forecast? The answer is “yes” if our
models capture reality.
Obviously, once output per hour stabilizes even at a high rate, the acceleration of
inflation resumes provided, of course, that the NAIRU remains above the unemployment
rate. We have no evidence at this stage of which I am aware, however, that indicates the
acceleration in productivity has ended. All of our experience and courses in
Econometrics 101 induce a visceral antipathy to such persistence in productivity gains,
especially for me since I have the oldest gut in this room. [Laughter] What is
increasingly evident is that something seems to be happening that none of us has ever
witnessed before--perhaps a once-in-a-century structural shift in how goods and services
are produced. People in the front lines of business operations, such as Jack Welch of GE
and Lou Gerstner of IBM, say this is a true revolution. They have seen nothing like this
in their experience. And I venture to say that if we get on the phone with a number of
business people who have been around a long time, we are going to hear this view from
all of them. No one is saying that this accumulative, technology-driven productivity
growth is showing any signs of slowing.
I would not go that far, but I believe something profound is happening. We are
observing market capitalizations that are telling us something very interesting even as we
simultaneously argue that stock market prices are overvalued. We are seeing a very
dramatic shift in the changing capitalizations of high-tech versus low-tech companies.

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But even the low-tech companies are not showing any significant real destruction
of market values, though that’s only because there are no low-tech companies anymore.
The least efficient types of steel operations, such as those employing blast and oxygen
furnaces and old-fashioned rolling mills, if that’s all they were, would long since have
disappeared from the industrial scene. But they have stripped workers out of rolling mills
at a rate that is unbelievable, and we are left with high-tech steel operations--to the extent
that we can have them with that obsolete structure of making steel.
I had a conversation with

on the question of what will

happen to the market values of real estate in malls if indeed we experience a significant
shift to cyber space types of distribution. In that event, the commercial buildings will no
longer have the importance that they now have. The one saving grace in all of this, as I
believe I said

is that shopping is not a fully economic activity. In fact, most

people actually seem to shop for entertainment and other reasons.

So, shopping malls are places involving what might in a sense be viewed as
cultural activities. Shopping is what people do. We are not dealing with a wholly
economic issue. I am not saying that it is appropriate for

with their

huge real estate investments, to be significantly worried. But there is something going on
in the economy, something profoundly important, and we don’t know where it is going to
lead. The mere fact that some profound economic change occurs every century must put
us on guard to make sure that it doesn’t happen on our watch without our being aware of
it. If it’s real, it is crucially important and very significantly complicates our task in
setting monetary policy.
How do we know when an economy is overheating? We cannot tell from the rate
of economic growth by itself. Obviously, if output per hour is accelerating, so are real
income and GDP. And if output is accelerating, that of necessity has to show up in the
spending components since the accounts must balance. Currently, motor vehicle sales are
running well in excess of past trends. Housing sales are absurdly high. Capital
investment is strong. So, are we really saying that the economy is overheating because
we are looking at a 17-plus million annual rate of automobile sales and new home sales

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that are moving up to a 1 million annual rate? That, in and of itself, says nothing about
the degree to which this economic system is overheating. We cannot tell until we look at
the combination of aggregate supply and aggregate demand. The reduced form view of
all of this is whether or not we have slack in the product and/or the labor markets.
If we have a situation in which effective demand exceeds potential supply, then
prices rise. If it is the other way around, they fall. What we have now is clearly an
ambivalent set of circumstances in that we are getting a very dramatic acceleration in
aggregate demand but we are not seeing the usual effect in prices. Or more exactly, from
the point of view that I think is relevant, we are not seeing it in unit costs. Indeed, the
data that we put together, or more exactly that Larry Slifman puts together by extending
the information that we get from the BLS and Commerce on unit costs in nonfinancial
corporations, suggest that for the quarter just ending--and this is consistent with the
Greenbook which, remember, I suspect has a low productivity estimate--the change in
unit costs is effectively zero over the past four quarters. Prices are up somewhat because
margins seem to be rising in certain areas. Overall, margins have risen a good deal from
the fourth quarter of 1998. The reason is not that prices have been accelerating. It is that
unit cost growth rates have been falling. In that regard, when we look at a system where
short-term earnings expectations are accelerating quite pronouncedly--certainly that is the
case for the first quarter and also for the second--that is telling us that profit margins are
opening up in the context of a decline in unit cost growth. This is scarcely an indication
that effective demand is exceeding potential supply at this particular stage. We certainly
don’t see it in terms of product market tightness. We don’t see any particular shortages.
Where we do have a problem is in the labor markets. If we had a fully balanced
system in which output and demand were equal to working age population growth plus
trend productivity growth, then one would presume that we had a stable system. We
don’t have that at the moment. We are continuously reducing the number of people who
would like to work but don’t have a job. That number is going down, though it is going
down less than it was a year ago when the pool of available workers was shrinking at an
annual rate of a million people. That number is now down to about 500,000, which is
roughly equivalent to ½ percentage point in potential GDP growth. In other words,
aggregate demand is currently running in excess of potential growth by about that

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amount. And that, as best I can judge, is being engendered wholly by a wealth effect. In
fact, our estimate of the wealth effect is greater than that.
The point I am trying to make here is that we have a situation that is out of
equilibrium. We don’t see it in the price data currently. What we do see is a situation
that, if it continues indefinitely, must create some problems in the labor market and
eventually in unit labor costs and prices. At that point we clearly will be experiencing a
real-time inflation process.
The one thing I find a little puzzling at this stage is why the rates of decline in
both the unemployed and the broader category of job seekers are slowing. One argument
obviously could be that we are running out of people and are scraping the bottom of the
barrel. But if that were the case, we would see far more in the way of anecdotal reports,
not to mention statistical data, on increasing average hourly earnings. It may be that
when the data for June come out on Friday we will see a big pop, and we will then be
able to say “problem solved.” But that is by no means evident. To be sure, the last
Beigebook did show a little more evidence of labor market pressures. But we do not
have clear-cut, unequivocal evidence at this stage that the economy is in the process of
accelerating. If we believe the economy we have today is truly captured by the
forecasting structure in the Greenbook and in the extended projection of the Bluebook,
then the policy issue that Tom Hoenig raised would be up front on the table and in my
judgment definitive.
My answer to Tom is that if we believe the staff forecast, the argument for 50
basis points and going symmetric would I think be overwhelming at this point. My
problem is that as I see it the structure that is actually governing this economy is not
being properly captured in the models used for the forecasts. I believe the evidence that
we have to date suggests that the 2¼ percent trend productivity number is already
obsolete. I suspect we are going to find that to be the case as the year goes on unless the
individuals in the business community with whom we interact are completely missing the
boat. We would not be seeing the profit figures and the economic growth that we are
observing if what all these people are saying is wrong. And we surely would not be
seeing declining rates of inflation in unit costs. Indeed, after this extended period of
economic expansion we would not be seeing a four-quarter average change of zero, or

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actually -0.1, in the unit costs of nonfinancial corporations and of 0.2 in unit labor costs.
This is not the type of economy that is well captured by the econometric structure we
have built into our Greenbook forecasts. One only needs to go back and look at the
Greenbook forecasts to see that the projected trend productivity number is higher in each
successive Greenbook.
I don’t know whether the surge of cost-cutting and the acceleration of
productivity have reached a peak. As I said at the beginning, I thought at the time of the
last meeting that there was some evidence that that was indeed the case. The stabilization
that I felt was happening has disappeared and productivity has surged dramatically
higher.
I do feel uncomfortable with the funds rate at 4¾ percent, and I think the
appropriate thing is to move it up to 5 percent if for no other reason than to undo part of
the 75 basis point reduction that we put in place during the fall. That clearly was a
reaction to events which, as Don Kohn just said, have changed. There is the longer-term
issue of our labor markets still being out of equilibrium even if we can explain why wage
pressures are not as strong as I, at least, think they really are. I know our wage-price
equations do capture this in part, but I am frankly a bit skeptical and fearful that a little
data mining is involved in this process.
If we are looking at the issue of symmetry versus asymmetry, I don’t think the
realistic question relates to the most likely direction of the next move we are going to
make. Unless the economy comes apart unexpectedly, I think the chances of our having
to move the funds rate lower are close to zero. The next move we are likely to make is
almost surely up. If that is indeed our expectation, we would have concluded under our
past regime that that calls for asymmetry. But we are now in a new regime and those
terms no longer mean what they did in the past. I was startled by the extraordinary
market talk after we announced an asymmetrical directive following the May meeting,
though the correction in the federal funds rate that actually occurred was modest. We
might as well have raised rates at that point as far as I am concerned. What I find quite
bothersome is the existence of at least some evidence, although Don Kohn tells me it’s
somewhat dubious, that a lot of corporate treasurers are allegedly borrowing ahead for the
purpose of beating the Fed to the punch. Indeed, what we are looking at is a long-term

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interest rate that is moving up because market participants think the Fed is going to move.
In the process we are losing our ability to understand what the markets are telling us. I
am concerned that we are looking in the mirror. What we are endeavoring to do is to
evaluate objectively what is going on in the economy and to craft monetary policy to
appropriately address what we observe. But with our new announcement procedure, I am
fearful that we may inadvertently have created a situation in which financial players are
reacting to what we are doing and in the process causing the markets to run ahead and
give us signals that are inappropriate.
I believe it was Ned Gramlich who pointed out that the federal funds rate is lower
at the moment than the real implicit long-term rate. I suspect there is a good policy
argument there, but I’m not sure that the real long-term rate is the market rate. I think it
may be the Fed viewers’ rate of the day, and I am not sure that helps us because we can
then get ourselves caught in a bind. I know that sounds a little peculiar, but I think the
way Don Kohn put it is probably what we ought to be doing, namely to go to formal
symmetry. We also would, as we have in the past, suggest that our real concern is the
risk of rising inflation. We do have potential imbalances in that direction and very little
evidence on the other hand that our next move is going to be to lower rates.
So I would suggest, for discussion at least, that we raise the funds rate 25 basis
points today, go back to formal symmetry, but include wording in our announcement that
we have used in the past when we were going asymmetric. That’s a longer speech than I
had intended to make.
MR. KELLEY. Very interesting.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Vice Chairman.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. Mr. Chairman, I agree fully with your
recommendation and let me explain why. In my view there is no question that we should
raise the fed funds rate. A failure to do so would create an extraordinarily strong reaction
in markets; I think the first trade would be up and I’m not quite sure where the second
trade would be because people would wonder where Federal Reserve policy was now
headed.
The issue really becomes the question of the announcement and the tilt. I agree
with you fully--and as I mentioned yesterday--that financial markets are simply not

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functioning in a way that a market economy needs to have them function. Markets have
to have bulls and bears and buyers and sellers to function effectively. Instead, what we
have is people trading off a new breed of Fed watchers who are more involved in politics
and amateur psychoanalysis than the old Fed watchers who tended to look at all the
numbers and variables. This phenomenon, I think, is extremely counterproductive and
something that we need to move against by shifting our approach.
I tried to make the distinction yesterday between the philosophical role of the
central bank, which is clearly price stability on a symmetric basis, and the need in a
shorter time frame to distinguish between strategy and tactics. I believe the intermeeting
tilt should be described as tactical. Since it is not clear when we will have to make the
next tightening move, it seems to me that tactical symmetry is appropriate and that is
what I believe you recommended.
The question is: How do we go about establishing what I would describe as
strategic asymmetry, if the likely imbalances in the market develop in the direction of
requiring further tightening? I think we have to do that through the new vehicle of the
statement regarding the policy objectives of the Federal Reserve that will accompany our
action this afternoon.
I also agree that if we were absolutely certain that we had to increase the funds
rate by 50 basis points, we ought to do it today and go symmetric. However, I think that
would be very, very difficult to manage. We have had a poor record in this Committee in
trying to give a signal that we have done something and that’s it; and certainly the recent
experience of the European Central Bank would not lead one to believe in such an
approach. The last time I remember our doing that was in August of 1994 and it was a
mistake then. I think a lot of us were rather queasy about what we said then. We should
have been because it was the wrong thing to say given that we did continue to tighten
after that, and rather soon after that.
In addition to the fact that it would be very difficult to manage, there are two
other reasons why it isn’t altogether clear that we need to raise the funds rate another 25
basis points this year. I have a feeling, in one of the older stomach linings in this room,
that the new once-in-a-century type of phenomenon is actually likely to be happening.
But as central bankers, with monetary policy lags of one to two years, we don’t need to

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sign up for that view now. All we need to do is have a reasonable degree of confidence
that it is likely to continue for the next one to two years. And I think there is every
reason to believe that.
Lastly, on the issue of labor force tightness: Without any question all of the
anecdotes that we hear that markets are very tight here and there--in fact, in most places-­
are clearly right. But just as the economy is changing, I think the labor force and the
availability of people in it are changing too. We have within our society fairly large
numbers of people who really thought jobs were not available for them. We are changing
that. The nature of the way the economy is behaving, the beneficial effects of what has
been-- either by good luck or good guidance or some of each--very effective monetary
policy is making it much more likely for many people to think that they can really have a
job. The data on the labor force--data measuring those who might like to be in the labor
force-- don’t pick up such people very well. If we can continue to find that difficult-todefine pool and bring these fellow citizens into the labor force, I think that is a very good
thing. We can’t base monetary policy on the hope that that will happen; it may happen, it
may not. But it’s another reason to be observant of that change in the labor force and in
the availability of people to join the labor force--changes that flow from the changes in
the real economy. That’s something else we have to be aware of. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Kelley.
MR. KELLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me thank you for
those extremely provocative remarks. I look forward to working on digesting them as
soon as the transcript is available to us. But on a much more prosaic level, let me say
initially that I strongly support your recommendation. I think there are two sets of
reasons to be cautious about moving too aggressively right now. The first revolves
around the uncertainties of today’s economic situation, and in that regard I would make a
couple of points. This economy could slow spontaneously. In fact, it is doing so in the
second quarter relative to the first quarter. If we look at consumption and include
housing as a consumption item, that represents over 70 percent of GDP. If we throw in
capital expenditures, it’s well over 80 percent. I can think of a number of reasons why a
great many of those components could very easily grow more slowly. Even if they

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remain at a high level, their rates of growth could be substantially lower. Just because
they haven’t done that so far doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t or won’t.
Secondly, and this is partly what you referred to, Mr. Chairman, the trends of the
recent past could very easily extend for a long time. Extremely strong productivity may
very well have a long life ahead of it. Inflation may stay quiescent as it has been. If the
economies of the rest of the world stay somewhat more sluggish than we are implicitly
thinking, that may happen; and it would have a strong impact.
Lastly, we have a stock market that is in a very precarious position. It’s very
fragile and I think very shock prone. Investors can take their chances, but the concern is
that stock market developments could have a strong impact on the real economy.
Another factor in play here--and this harkens back again to your remarks, Mr.
Chairman, and to the dialogue with Don Kohn a few minutes ago--is the dynamic that we
may have set in place with our new policy of releasing the Committee’s views much
more freely. I think our first venture out with an announcement of our tilt in May really
went quite well. The markets seemed to understand it quite accurately and accept it for
what it was. Why we did it was interpreted fairly well. Markets moved. And here we
are, we’re moving. It worked okay this time around; I think the reaction was quite
responsible. But I think we ought to be careful about being too comfortable that this is
always going to be the case. This new policy we have now is being watched with
unbelievable intensity and apprehension, not just by market players but also by the man
on the street for perhaps the first time. My sense is that it is broadly perceived by Wall
Street and Main Street that under the old regime, as they came to understand it, these tilts
meant very little to them but that under the new regime they probably mean a lot more.
And they just don’t know what that meaning might turn out to be. That is a perfect setup,
I think, for a very serious misinterpretation or overreaction on the part of the public. To
avoid that, this Committee should be very judicious and very cautious in how we bill this
policy and its announcement. I fear that if we do more than just a 25 basis point
tightening today, then we are going to run a wholly unnecessary risk of losing control of
events here and of very possibly creating substantial and unpredictable mischief. Let’s
remember, of course, that we can tighten any time we feel it’s necessary; and we can do

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it, and have many times, from a symmetric directive. We can so indicate in the
announcement that we release this afternoon. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Meyer.
MR. MEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Greenbook forecast, which is not
far from either the consensus forecast or my own, suggests that we will not be able to
stabilize inflation at an acceptable rate without multiple tightening moves. Given the risk
of higher inflation, the 50 basis point tightening this year that is incorporated into the
Greenbook forecast would in my view be prudent and appropriate. That would mean
doing the 25 basis points today and another 25 basis points later in the year, subject to the
condition that data in the interim do not disconfirm the need for a second move. I believe
there are few risks of moving in this direction, given the strength of the economy today,
initial conditions in terms of labor market tightness, and our ability to reverse course if
necessary. There is, on the other hand, considerable risk in doing nothing. This is
another example of the maximin strategy: Consider the worst outcomes under various
policy alternatives and select the policy with the least bad outcome. Mr. Chairman, you
talked about the possibility that productivity is still accelerating, and that might be the
case. If it is, I expect it also means that the equilibrium real interest rate is rising as well;
and in that case it seems to me that there is little damage to be done by such a modest
increase in interest rates.
I want to spend some time talking about policy rules and the issue of how to
operate with uncertainty about the measurement of the output gap. The papers that were
prepared for this meeting were, I think, very provocative and interesting and deserve
some comments.
The policy prescription from the simple Taylor rule would yield a more
aggressive near-term tightening than the one I suggested. But a similar trajectory over
time is in the Greenbook in the extended forecast. The policy called for under the Taylor
rule would fall into two phases. The first phase would be what I’d call the reassessment
or the releveling phase. That is, the rule would call for immediately reversing at least the
easings of last fall for a return to the prescribed path for the target funds rate. The second
phase would be in response to changes in the unemployment rate and the inflation rate
going forward.

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Now, the Orphanides et al. work on uncertainty about the output gap suggests
attenuating, though not eliminating, the response of the funds rate to changes in the
output gap. It suggests, therefore, only a partial return to the level-based Taylor rule
prescription, but would yield the same “phase two” increase in the funds rate in response
to higher inflation. The conclusion in these papers that policymakers should downweight
their response to changes in the output gap in the face of uncertainty about its
measurement is both very intuitive and very sensible. But there is a difference, as
emphasized in these papers, between downweighting the response to the output gap and
ignoring the output gap altogether. This is the difference between uncertainty and total
ignorance.
I would note also that the Orphanides, et al. prescription is symmetric. For those
inclined to applaud the downweighting of the output gap at the current policy decision
point, keep in mind that the same logic implies that we should also respond by less to
increases in the unemployment rate as the economy weakens. We can’t have it both
ways--to be aggressive to a weakening in the economy and passive to a strengthening
unless, of course, we want to guarantee higher inflation over time.
These papers highlight very effectively the importance of flexibility in using
policy rules. Policy rules are best used to inform judgment, not to displace judgment. At
times we might be willing to respond to the data; at times we will want to respond to the
forecast. Sometimes we may have the confidence to implement level-based rules;
sometimes we may want to be more cautious along the lines of change rules. Whether
we’re prepared to be more aggressive or more cautious in responding to changes in the
output gap may also depend upon initial conditions, in particular where we are relative to
the range of estimates of the output gap.
The question remains how to apply the insights from this work. I don’t find
appealing the change or growth rule offered by Orphanides. It suggests that we raise the
funds rate when growth is above trend, then lower the funds rate when growth falls back
to trend. Given that the underlying model implies that inflation depends on utilization
rates and not growth, the change rule does not seem like a sensible strategy to me. It
implies raising the funds rate when the utilization rate is rising, then lowering the funds

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rate when the utilization rate stabilizes at the higher level. The problem is that it’s
difficult to design a sensible rule in the face of uncertainty if constrained to linear rules.
The rule I suggested at previous meetings is a nonlinear one. It allows for a
downweighting of the response to the output gap when the gap is in a range around the
best estimate, but for a sharper response once the gap has increased to the point where
one is more confident that the economy has moved beyond the level of sustainable
capacity. This is consistent with the sensible view that we should be cautious about finetuning, interpreted to mean aggressive responses to small changes relative to our targets.
But we should recognize the gains of “crude-tuning,” interpreted as more aggressive
responses to changes in output once output has moved farther away from the target.
Applying this nonlinear rule to today’s decisions would imply returning toward, but not
all the way to, the simple Taylor rule prescription. A 50 basis point increase in the funds
rate implemented over the next few meetings would, for example, be consistent with a
halving of the response parameter of the output gap in a simple Taylor rule. But my
nonlinear rule would also call for returning to a more aggressive response to further
increases in the output gap going forward, given that the unemployment rate is already so
low relative to estimates of NAIRU. A 25 basis point move today could be viewed as a
partial reversal of the ease that was implemented last fall, in effect a partial return to a
level-based Taylor rule. This is also consistent with a preemptive effort to limit the
upward trend in inflation that appears likely to emerge going forward.
Let me emphasize a consideration favoring the second move, if it’s to be made, at
the next meeting or two as opposed to later in the year. My presumption is that we will
be disinclined to tighten after October through the end of the year because of possible
volatility in financial markets related to Y2K and to shifts in the demand for liquidity.
While a move in November is certainly not out of the question, I suspect we will be
reluctant to take such action.
Now, I think the decision about whether or not to retain an asymmetric directive
today is somewhat less important in light of the fact that there will be an announcement,
presumably, if we raise the funds rate. We can use this announcement to convey our
sense of the balance of risks. Nevertheless, I have a preference for an asymmetric
directive.

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Let me note, however, that I think we are likely to encounter problems whether
we opt for a symmetric or an asymmetric directive. If we return to a symmetric directive,
the markets are likely to interpret today’s move as the one and only one that we expect to
make this year, unless they doubt we really mean a symmetric directive. As a result,
market participants will revise downward their expectations about the funds rate in
coming months, resulting in a rally in the bond and equity markets. I would prefer a
more market neutral result. We could try to achieve this by combining a symmetric
directive with asymmetric language in the announcement, but that seems destined to look
confused as well as to confuse.
If we choose an asymmetric directive, on the other hand, we could feed the
anxiety in the markets about an even larger set of increases than the 50 basis points I
expect to be appropriate. In addition, we want to keep our options open for a further rate
increase as we assess the data over the next couple of months, rather than definitively
signal that it’s a sure thing
My preference is for an asymmetric directive with a somewhat calming
announcement, followed by a return to a symmetric directive after the second move--if
we opt for a second move. This has the advantage of conveying the most useful
information to the markets about our intentions and of being truthful. An added benefit is
that moving to a symmetric directive after the second move would be a very effective
way of signaling that we do not expect further near-term moves. It would be less
informative if we moved to a symmetric directive today and then raised rates in August
or October.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Gramlich.
MR. GRAMLICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am at least a modified new
economy kind of guy. I have argued in the past here that there is reason to believe that
we have had a shift up in productivity and a shift down in NAIRU. The staff models
have incorporated this and, as I said yesterday, I’d be willing to take their modification as
probabilistically accurate. I read the materials carefully over the weekend and I
concluded that a 50 basis point increase was appropriate.
When Don Kohn circulated the Orphanides paper, I probably had a perverse
reaction to it because it reminded me of the 1960s, and I think I’m haunted by that. We

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let inflation get out of control then; we got behind in the game. And I certainly don’t
want to do that again.
I’m sorry that Alice Rivlin can’t be here for what I’m about to say next. We
often talked about making the FOMC meeting more like a meeting--that is, not having
canned remarks so much but actually having an interchange of ideas. I will say in that
light that, frankly, you’ve all talked me out of a 50 basis point change. The discussion
yesterday was less hawkish than I would have imagined. A number of you surprised me
in what you said. The Chairman had a couple of bites at the apple, and he eroded my
faith in the 50 a little bit each time. So I’m now okay with 25.
Frankly, I don’t see a huge difference between 25 basis points with symmetry and
somewhat hawkish talk versus 25 basis points with asymmetry and some language in our
announcement that says this is not the start of a 300 basis point increase or something on
that order. It’s hard for me to be certain, but my uninformed understanding of markets is
that they tend to evolve to reflect what people say over time. There will be an
announcement today. There will be future testimony. So I don’t have a huge preference
on that issue. I suppose I’m a bit on Larry Meyer’s side of that because every time I’ve
tried to slice baloney I’ve cut my thumb! So I’d rather do it in a fairly simply way. But
the other could work, so I’m certainly not going to dissent from that.
I want to say a few things about the FOMC, though. My main point is that,
whatever we do today, I think we are placing a lot of importance on future data. So we
have to be very careful that we are alert to respond if our present uncertainty gets
resolved in one way or another, as indeed we responded last fall. I think we have to
repeat that vigilance and readiness to respond now.
Along that line let me make two suggestions on things we might do. One is--and
this may violate some traditions I’m not aware of--that I actually liked the experience last
fall with intermeeting changes and, since we all have telephones, we might want to do
more of that. That might cut some of the wind out of the Fed-watching industry, which I
think we would all favor.
The second is that lots of times in our meetings people have come up with new
indicators that we ought to look at that don’t quite suggest what some of the other
indicators have suggested. The Chairman does this more than anybody else, but

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everybody does it to some degree. I wonder if it would be possible to give some thought
to having the staff track information on what I’ll call “leading indicators of inflation” and
circulate it to the Committee. One thing that might be in it is the unit cost number that
the Chairman just talked about; another is this modified unemployment rate, which
includes discouraged workers in the calculation of the unemployment rate. There are
various kinds of price indices that might be leading indicators of what could happen with
what are known as the headline price indices. If we had all of those made available to us
on a very current basis, first of all we would all be more informed and, secondly, we’d
tend to be more on the same page. Therefore, when we get together and think about what
is going on, there would be less chance of being surprised with new information at the
meeting that we hadn’t really thought about. So I would put on the table the suggestion
that we might improve our process, if you will, in that way. I’d like to see the staff give
some thought to that. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Broaddus.
MR. BROADDUS. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully but strongly would oppose the
move back to symmetric directive language. If I read market expectations at all
accurately, I think market participants are widely expecting the ¼ point move and they
are also expecting a further move of at least ¼ point in the not too distant future. So if we
change the directive language to symmetry, in effect we are going to be changing those
expectations. Since we are now announcing the tilt under our new procedures, I think it
is going to be very difficult to do so in a statement along the lines that Don Kohn
suggested. I respect his point of view, but I’m just not at all sure that the language of the
statement that we issue is going to offset the fact that we moved to symmetry. So to me
it’s a credibility issue. When I heard you suggest earlier what your own expectations are,
what I heard is in my view best described as asymmetry toward tightness. I think as a
matter of credibility we need to report that.
More fundamentally, I think a ¼ point increase combined with a change in the
directive language is just not strong enough in the current situation, even given the points
that you made in your comments. Actually, I was thinking that the question might come
down to whether to do 50 basis points with symmetry or asymmetry. I had decided on

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the basis of this kind of logic that even if we did 50, it might be misleading to have a
change of language to symmetry.
If I may, let me make some comments on the Orphanides paper. I thought we
were going to have a more extended go-around about that, but I would just make a couple
of comments because I don’t think they are unrelated to the short-run issue. First of all, I
thought the Orphanides paper was extremely interesting; it was one of the most enjoyable
staff papers I’ve read in a long time, and I think it’s very useful in many respects. Apart
from the particular policy conclusions it suggests, I think it could make an even broader
contribution if it led us to evaluate, on a more systematic basis, our past decisions and
actions retrospectively. The military, for example, have been doing this for years. They
devote a lot of resources--time, money, and personnel--to trying to learn systematically
from their experience, and I think we ought to consider doing the same thing. After all,
monetary policy is not unlike a military campaign. It involves strategy, tactics, uncertain
information, and a rapidly changing environment. And the stakes are very high. I think a
good way to approach this would be to develop some additional real time series and also
to start routinely keeping real time data going forward. Some of that is already going on
in the System. But if we were to do the kind of thing I have in mind, I think it would
have to be centered here at the Board.
With regard to the paper’s specifics, Orphanides shows that real time output gap
data are subject to significant measurement problems. And he concludes that we should
reduce the weight that we give that data, or more fundamentally that we should move the
funds rate only very cautiously in reaction to incoming data on the output gap. That
would mean, in the context of the paper, that we would react primarily to deviations of
actual inflation above an inflation target. But arguably--and this is really the simple point
I want to make--our main policy successes in the 1980s and 1990s have come when we
have acted more preemptively. The go/stop cycles that all of us remember in the 1960s
and 1970s were, in my view at least, often the result of not reacting aggressively enough
to early signs of rising inflation pressures. If there are problems with the output gap, then
maybe we could find some other variable--some forward-looking measure of inflation
expectations--to use in this context, if we use that sort of rule, such as survey information

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or bond rates. So it may be a good exercise to take on to see if we could develop some of
these real time data series to see how a Taylor rule would work with those.
Finally, I’d like to point out a deficiency in the Taylor rule as I see it; I think it is
fundamentally the one identified in the Orphanides paper. And that is that the rule
suggests that we only need to move the real funds rate away from a fixed constant, given
by the historical average, if in fact an output gap or an inflation gap arises. But as Larry
Meyer suggested earlier, even if these gaps were zero, macroeconomic developments can
make it necessary for real short rates to move and for us to follow and accommodate
those rate changes. An example, one Larry cited earlier--and I’ve made this point in
some previous meetings--is that an increase in trend productivity growth means that real
short rates need to rise. Just to repeat, the reason is that households and businesses would
want to borrow against their perception of higher future income now in order to increase
current consumption and investment before it’s actually available. So the rate needs to
rise to induce those consumers and business to defer that spending until in fact the output
is available. The Taylor rule doesn’t give any attention to that kind of real business cycle
reason for a move in rates. It only allows reaction to inflation gaps and output gaps.
So bottom line, while I really enjoyed reading this paper and I think it was
extremely valuable, I’m not entirely comfortable with what I see as one of its major
implications, which is that this Committee should be even more circumspect than it is
now in moving the funds rate. I believe a case can be made that just the opposite is true.
And then we can get rid of this situation where we have 500 reporters and 600 cameras
around this building when we have one of these meetings! Thank you.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Jordan.
MR. JORDAN. Thank you. I certainly agree that a move today is appropriate.
As far as the strength of the action and the way it’s interpreted, I’d prefer to do that with
or without discount rate increases. Since I believe that a stronger action now is
appropriate, I hope the Board will consider the issue of the discount rate on behalf of my
directors anyway.
Unlike Al Broaddus, though, I’m going to disagree on the issue of the symmetry.
I favor a permanent move to a symmetric directive. [Laughter]
MR. BROADDUS. I might buy that!

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MR. JORDAN. The happy state of affairs is one where the collective view of the
group, when we meet, is that the risks are in fact balanced. I prefer symmetry in our
behavior more than in our words, and it troubles me when there’s asymmetry in our
behavior with or without asymmetry in our words. Last fall, when the opinion of the
Committee shifted toward the view that the risks were on the downside, we moved very
promptly over a fairly short period of time to a position where the collective judgment of
the Committee was that the risks were in fact balanced. I think we should be symmetric
about that on the upside as well. When the collective view of the Committee is that the
risks are on the upside, we should move as promptly, at meetings or between meetings, to
get back to where we feel that the risks are balanced.
As far as the announcement of symmetry/asymmetry, I think Professor Eisenberg
has bitten again, or as the British would say “Goodhart’s law has hit us again.” We and
most other central banks have known that announcing exchange rate targets or levels or
something of that nature is a rather foolish thing to do; it comes back to haunt us. We
have learned with monetary targeting that if the wisdom of the market is that they know
the trigger point--that if some growth rate of some money measure is epsilon above or
below a certain level, that is going to trigger a policy action--it isn’t going to work.
That’s because it doesn’t elicit the behavior in the marketplace that would occur if they
didn’t know what the trigger was.
Imagine the absurdity if we were to announce this afternoon that the Committee
voted today to raise the funds rate ¼ point at its next meeting on August 24 and,
therefore, we plan to save the airfare and the travel time and just not show up then
because we’ve already decided we are going to do that. Well, that’s rather absurd. So I
think announcing something that is interpreted by the market as meaning that we have
already decided to raise rates at our next meeting, as I think the May announcement was
interpreted, gets us into an undesirable position. I can tell you already that I don’t want
to go into the October 5 meeting with a predisposition to raise rates because I don’t want
to be blamed for the crash of the stock market in October! [Laughter] I also know that I
want to get to the December meeting--and possibly even the November meeting, but I’m
much more certain about the December meeting--clearly feeling that the risks are
balanced. If anything, we ought to feel that we have as much chance of lowering rates as

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raising them once we get to December and into the next year. We ought to be ready to go
in either direction. We know there’s going to come a time when things will again be
changing rapidly in a downward direction, and I would prefer to enter that environment
with the risks in balance. We do not have balanced risks right now. I think we need to
get to a position where we’re comfortable that the risks are symmetric as soon as we can.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Boehne.
MR. BOEHNE. I think we do need to raise the funds rate 25 basis points today.
It seems to me that we are largely boxed in by our rhetoric and we ought to do it and get
this episode behind us.
There is a reasonable economic rationale for this, given the uncertainty that we’re
facing, and that is a “take-back” rationale from last fall, with financial markets and the
rest of the world doing better. But I think we want to leave open the question of how
much of a take-back we need to do. It may be 25, it may be 50, or it may be 75. Who
knows? I think we ought to shift the focus back to the economy and back to the data that
come in. If, for example, we become more confident about productivity increases, if we
have a continuation of the pattern of prices and wages that has prevailed over the past
several years, then 25 may be fine. If, on the other hand, we become less confident of the
productivity increases and we begin to see some early warning signs that inflation is
picking up, then we are going to have to do more. And we ought to do more in those
situations.
As for the tilt, I think we ought to go back to a symmetric directive today. We
need to calm things down. We need to shift the public’s emphasis away from
psychoanalyzing this Committee and back to the economy; in my view a symmetric
directive would help do that. Announcing the tilt, at least in this initial experiment,
turned out to be a cruder instrument than I think we had anticipated, largely because of
the interaction of rhetoric. At this point we just don’t know enough to say how much, or
if, we have to raise rates further, and therefore we shouldn’t box ourselves in for the
future. We ought to see how reality plays out and go from there.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Parry.
MR. PARRY. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation for a 25 basis point
increase. I would favor asymmetry because I think it more correctly reflects what I

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believe the risks are to the outlook and policy. I would be against symmetry because I
fear first of all that, in itself, it doesn’t correctly reflect our assessment of the risks.
Secondly, I am also concerned that it would be misinterpreted by the market. Obviously
a statement accompanying symmetry could clarify things and indicate why the risks are
not really symmetrical. But if we are going to go that route, even Jerry Jordan’s
recommendation becomes more attractive to me. And I really begin to wonder whether
referring to symmetry accomplishes anything.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Governor Ferguson.
MR. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, support your
recommendation for a 25 basis point tightening at this stage. We are in a period of some
uncertainty and we should weigh the data a little more heavily than the forecast. I think
the data support a small move. The forecast, with a 50 basis point increase built in, is
perhaps indicative of the need for a further move, but it’s not mandatory today based on
what we know. I think there is also some evidence that because of the high wealth-toincome ratio and also a larger share of imports in GDP that we may have a more
powerful tool here than we thought. That is something Alice Rivlin raised when she was
sitting in that seat a few meetings ago.
As to the question of the tilt, I have a slight preference for maintaining the
asymmetric tilt. I’m concerned that if we raise rates and go to symmetry and then put out
a somewhat hawkish message saying we’re still leaning in that direction, we will create
more rather than less of a tendency to psychoanalyze what the 17 or 18 of us are thinking.
Frankly, in my ideal world what we would have is a decision, a tilt announcement, and
complete silence from the Committee. We are not going to get there, but I think we at
least ought to continue the process of trying to help markets understand what these tilts
do or do not mean. I’m concerned about creating another tool in the form of a well
crafted legal/economic document that will give the market something else to chew over.
This is obviously not a strong point of view, and if we go to symmetry with a well-crafted
announcement by Don Kohn, I will applaud Don’s efforts and try to get him something
for his gray hair! But I don’t think that’s the better way to deal with the situation at this
stage.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Hoenig.

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MR. HOENIG. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation. I came into this
meeting wanting at least a discussion of a 50 basis point increase, and I got that, which I
appreciate very much. It was very helpful. Along those lines and in listening to you, my
assessment has been shaded in terms of the issue--the issue being the degree and the
durability of productivity improvements that we’re all trying to decipher. So, I would go
with the 25 basis points. It is a move up, which I think is appropriate. And it represents a
continuation of the gradualist approach on which we have built a pretty high degree of
credibility over time, and that has served us well.
Given all that, I would very strongly support a symmetric directive for this
meeting. I believe it represents the consensus of the FOMC and I don’t think we should
be anticipating the next move until one of two things happens--either we get new
information that addresses some of the earlier issues you raised, or we as a group have a
change in judgment. If either occurs, then we can change the rate again in the
intermeeting period or at the next meeting. I think that is the right approach in terms of
dealing with the market and the information we share.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Guynn.
MR. GUYNN. Mr. Chairman, I support your recommendation of a ¼ point
tightening. My thoughts on symmetry mirror Bob Parry’s very closely and the views
Larry Meyer and Al Broaddus expressed earlier. I judge the sentiment around the table,
certainly my own, as a judgment that one 25 basis point tightening is probably not
enough to deal with what is likely to be coming. So I still think the probability of our
needing to tighten further is fairly high. To me it is more intellectually honest and more
credible to go ahead and tell people that, rather than to try to back into it with a
symmetric directive.
I also am afraid that moving back to symmetry mutes our policy move and makes
it too timid. My two-year-old granddaughter when she finishes eating says “all done”
and has this cute hand signal to say she’s finished. I am afraid that not only financial
markets but lenders, builders, and others will get the sense that we saw the need to tighten
further as only a tiny threat and will quit helping us in trying to lean against what we see
coming. Also, to me, moving back to symmetry suggests that we’re smart enough to

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make one small ¼ point tightening move and fine-tune with a precision that I don’t think
we have.
Finally, I’m concerned, despite the reminders that we frequently have made a
policy move from symmetry, about the view that we can tell markets “so be it” if we
decide we need to move. Just as we have created a new device with the symmetry/
asymmetry announcement, I think we have created--either intentionally or unintentionally
--an expectation that we will try very hard, perhaps harder than in the past, to let people
know where we are headed. I am concerned that even though the data may begin to
nudge us in the direction of additional tightening, we may want to cycle back through and
move to an asymmetric directive and then to a tightening move later. That would push
the move to later in the year than is necessary and--as Larry Meyer reminded us and as I
said at the last meeting--will get us into the period when I suspect we will prefer not to be
meddling in markets while the Y2K situation is in play. So I would have at least a
modest preference for an asymmetric directive.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Poole.
MR. POOLE. Mr. Chairman, I support the recommendation for a 25 basis point
increase in the federal funds rate. I think the issue on symmetry is complicated by the
fact that the language in the directive refers explicitly to the intermeeting period. The
sentiment around the table seems to be that we may or may not need an increase in the
intermeeting period or at the next meeting; I think that’s the way the markets are going to
interpret symmetry. But the sentiment around the table is that, more likely than not, we
are going to need some increases later in the year, perhaps at the next meeting or
sometime later. So I think the problem is that we are getting into a box with the precise
wording of that symmetry clause. If it’s confined strictly to the intermeeting period and
if we can make that clear in what we say, then it seems to me that a symmetrical directive
is probably appropriate. I don’t think we want to give a firm signal that we are rather
confident that we will need to increase rates before or at the next meeting. My judgment,
in reading what people said around the table, is that we are not confident about that. I
would very much defer to your desires in how you want to craft the directive language
and the associated wording of the press release.

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Getting away from the issue of the wording--which is a very important issue and
I’m not trying to belittle it at all--I certainly count myself among those who believe that
the Phillips curve is an unreliable policy guide. What that means is that the predictive
content for the inflation rate--and I’ll emphasize the “predictive”--of the estimated
employment gap or GDP gap, however you want to put it, seems to be very low. But
having said that, it is still true that we must somehow regulate the thrust of monetary
policy to keep it in line with the economy’s capacity to produce goods. We can’t get
away from that underlying responsibility of trying to match the monetary thrust with the
economy’s capacity to produce.
If it is true that output growth and employment provide little insight into the
inflation rate in the short run, this Phillips curve idea, then I also want to emphasize that
the converse is also true--that the inflation rate does not have predictive content for
employment and growth. We believe the proposition that as a long-run matter the
inflation rate can settle wherever it might be more or less independently of the
unemployment rate. But we can’t have it both ways. We can’t believe, it seems to me,
that the Phillips curve works only in one direction or that it doesn’t work in one direction.
If there’s no content in one direction, there’s no content in the other direction either. That
leads me to emphasize that we should not believe that a monetary policy thrust designed
to yield, let’s say, a lower rate of inflation is going to have any predictable implication for
employment and growth.
I have no doubt that a highly restrictive policy could tank the economy. I think
we all believe that we can take the economy by surprise and we could produce a
significant downturn by making a mistake. But I continue to believe that that’s not the
likely course of events. I think the greater risk to employment is that inflation will drift
up and will drift up to the point where it will unsettle market expectations, and that will
put us in the box of saying we just can’t allow this to continue. We will get ourselves off
on one side and market expectations will be destabilized. So I believe that the greater
risk to employment stems precisely from a drifting up of inflation. That is my reading on
that.
I’d like to make a suggestion about the directive language. It seems to me that in
the general paragraph of the directive--I’m referring to the version called the draft

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directive which has a brown cover--we ought not to be implying in any way that we are
opposed to high employment and high growth. So I would suggest that we move the
language on inflation, which is in lines 13 to 17, up to the front so that when we talk
about the state of the economy we put the inflation discussion first. I’m looking at this
draft that was sent around to us with line numbers on it.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Which line numbers?
MR. POOLE. The document begins with “the general paragraph,” which says:
“The information reviewed at this meeting suggests a continued vigorous expansion in
economic activity.” In other words, we start off by talking about economic activity.
What I’m suggesting is that we start off by talking about the inflation environment. The
wording can’t be moved exactly the way it is written there, but the language about
inflation is down in lines 13 to 17. I’d emphasize that our concern is with inflation rather
than have the very first thing in this directive be a commentary on the growth of the
economy. I understand very well that there may be a problem changing the wording of
something like this on very short notice. But I would like to throw out for consideration
anyway trying to change the thrust of this so it doesn’t look as though somehow we are
opposed to vigorous growth by starting right off the bat with that as an observation about
the economy.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Let me make a suggestion. Clearly, we can’t do it
now because it will create a problem.
MS. MINEHAN. Right.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Why don’t you write a memorandum and give it to
Don Kohn. He will circulate it to the rest of the Committee and will collect comments.
If there is sufficient support for your position, we could bring it to the next meeting for
determination. Is that satisfactory?
MR. POOLE. Absolutely. In the press release for this meeting, if there is a press
release, we could put the emphasis on inflation and productivity growth and the
uncertainties about them ahead of the discussion of the real economy. Anyway, I throw
that out just as a possibility.
Let me say that I continue to believe that greater clarity in our inflation objective
would be constructive. I talked about this a couple of meetings ago. I’m not going to say

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that there’s a convincing case that a CPI of 1½ percent for the year is going to yield a
better economic performance than a CPI of 2½ percent. But I do believe that uncertainty
about that matter is worth in the end 100 basis points in long bonds, whether we settle at
1½ or 2½ percent. I think most people would say that uncertainty that adds 100 basis
points to market interest rates is going to affect the way the economy works. So I
continue to believe that more clarity about what our real objective is in that area would be
useful.
In terms of the market discussion about our policy and the language used last
time, the disclosure of the asymmetry--the way I would like to put it in Wall Street
language--means that “the fed funds rate is now in play.” There was a period in which it
was pretty stable and now it is in play. The whole issue is up in the air and that’s going
to be true until things seem to settle down and the rate settles down.
The ideal situation would be that both we and the market draw the same
conclusions from the incoming data about what actions are necessary to be consistent
with low inflation. That is the sort of expectational equilibrium that we would most like.
I believe the right way to handle this process is to be sure that the market is very clear
about our objectives and about our willingness to act to achieve those objectives. As the
data arrive on both the real economy and the inflation rate and on productivity and
everything else we look at, we would hope that the market would come to the same
judgments as we would about how to interpret that data. The hope is that we’re not just
looking at ourselves in the mirror when we try to assess market reactions to the data. We
should try to give to the markets a sense that we’re all in this together in terms of trying
to make sense out of the incoming flow of data and that we don’t have an absolute
conviction by any means about where all of this is going to take us. That is, we don’t
have a conviction about how much the federal funds rate is going to have to move or
even in which direction necessarily. Given that we’re not very far off of the right place to
be, we think the rate is going to depend on how the data come in.
I have a mild preference for an asymmetric directive, I suppose, because I think it
accurately describes the tenor of the Committee’s feelings about this. But I think also
that we need to have some discussion that emphasizes to the market that asymmetry

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should not be interpreted as a forecast of an automatic 25 basis point increase at the next
meeting independently of what happens.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Stern.
MR. STERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, favor a ¼ point increase in the
fed funds rate. I think it’s appropriate economically and the markets are prepared for it.
As far as the question of symmetry is concerned, I am on this issue where I usually am,
which is that I have a deep-seated, built-in bias toward symmetry. So, I feel that way this
time. My preference is simply to assess the incoming information and act if action is
appropriate. If we want to accompany that with some semi-hawkish language about how
we view the prospects, that’s fine with me. But I must admit I’m not at all sure how the
market will take that or any other statement.
It seems to me that it’s shorthand to say that the market is simply trying to
psychoanalyze the Fed and guess what’s going to happen next. Another way of saying
that, along the lines Bill Poole talked about, is that they’re looking at the same
information we’re looking at and they’re trying to piece it together and understand what it
means for prospective economic performance, monetary policy actions, and so on.
Maybe the effort to do that has become more intense. But even if that’s true, this won’t
be the first time there has been a lot of intensity in that effort.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President McTeer.
MR. MCTEER. We don’t know and can’t know what is over the horizon.
Inflation may be on the verge of accelerating or it may not be. Certainly a strong case
can be made that it is. But a similarly strong case could have been made this time last
year and this time the year before. Had we tried to enforce the speed limit based on
contemporaneous estimates of NAIRU over these last few years, we would most likely
not today have inflation under 2 percent and unemployment near 4 percent. I’d hate to
see us lose our nerve at this point and risk bringing the experiment to a premature end.
I’d rather continue to test the growth limits of the new economy unmodified. But if we
have to have a modest tightening, I hope it can be accompanied by a return to a neutral
bias to take some of the nervousness out of financial markets. That was the statement I
wrote just before you talked earlier, Mr. Chairman. Here’s what I wrote afterwards.
[Laughter] This is just a shorter version of the same thing: For reasons that you

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described so eloquently a while ago, I would prefer to keep our foot off the brake and
continue to test the limits of the new economy that you described. Your comments led
me to believe that if the Committee were not boxed in, you would have recommended at
this meeting no change in the fed funds rate. Therefore, to get out of the box, we should
adopt an unbiased directive at this meeting and, as Ed Boehne put it, calm things down.
Longer term we may want to revisit my earlier suggestion that we stop voting on a
directive bias or Jerry Jordan’s alternative that we make a permanent move to a
symmetric directive.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. President Moskow.
MR. MOSKOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a few comments on the
longer term. First, I too was very impressed by the discussion we had at our board
meeting of the Chicago and Detroit directors when they gave their presentations about
electronic commerce. We did it a little differently. We divided the board ahead of time
into groups on banking, services, retail, and manufacturing--we had done a background
paper for them ahead of time as well--and then they organized the presentations
themselves. Many of them did a lot of work preparing for them and I think the
presentations really were very enlightening. I came away from that discussion, and from
other things that I have read and heard in talking to people about this, with the feeling
that something profound is clearly happening in electronic commerce and its impact on
firms. I just don’t know how significant it is in terms of its impact on the economy. It’s
an area where we are all learning and we’re going to continue to learn in the coming
months and years. And I look forward to studying in more detail your very helpful
comments at this meeting.
As for the decision today, I certainly agree with the 25 basis point increase. On
the tilt, I think it’s a very close call. I thought the earlier discussion with Don Kohn and
your comments, Mr. Chairman, were very helpful. I think we are somewhere between
the full tilt and symmetry at this point. On balance, I come back to the point I mentioned
before: that our credibility--or more specifically, your credibility--is extremely important
and at this point it’s extremely high, too. So, I would defer to you on this question. But
my preference would be for asymmetry. Under the current circumstances I think 25 basis
points and no tilt will be misinterpreted unless accompanied by a very strong statement

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and strong language in your testimony. Even then, it still may be misinterpreted as
“that’s it,” as I believe Jack Guynn said. So, I prefer the asymmetric directive but I will
defer to you on this.
On the question of the tilt itself, I think we clearly have some learning to do
before we know how to use this new tool effectively. To quote you, Mr. Chairman, this
is one area where we’re engaged in “on-the-job training.” It’s a new tool and we’re in a
new environment. We have tightened before from symmetrical directives, but this is
new. I recall your mentioning at a meeting several years ago that back in 1994 when you
were planning to start a series of tightening moves, you had a great deal of difficulty
signaling that intention to the market at that time. Clearly, there’s no difficulty today in
that type of signaling. We’ve said that we are going to be more transparent with this tool.
If we go with symmetry, I view that as being less transparent. That’s my own personal
view. In my mind there are questions about the usefulness of the tilt itself. Just listening
to the discussion around the table today, it’s clear that there are very wide differences
among the members of this Committee as to exactly what the tilt means. If we keep the
tool in place, I think we will be using it a lot less than we did before, as was predicted last
year when we discussed this.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I think the conversation around the room is making
us more Jordanian than we had been. President Minehan.
MS. MINEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have thought for some time that
we needed to take back at least a portion, if not all, of the ease in monetary policy that we
enacted last fall in the face of chaotic financial markets. Certainly, the prospects for
external growth, the fact that we have not yet seen a rise in inflation, and that some of the
temporary factors that have been keeping it at bay are unwinding give me even more
cause to think that we should unwind that easing in monetary policy. So the question
today for me was not whether to tighten but how much to tighten. I know there’s a great
deal of uncertainty now and I accept the point of the research on this subject, which is
that the more uncertain we are the more slowly we should move, taking time to assess
things. That strikes me, as others have said, as rather intuitive.
Now, both the Greenbook and our own forecast suggest that at least 50 to 75 basis
points of tightening are needed this year just to keep a lid on inflation in 2000. Keeping

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the lid on inflation thereafter will require much more, as the longer-run analyses suggest.
It’s true that these analyses are done in a traditional way, using the traditional constructs
of most of our models, and they are subject to a lot of uncertainty. They incorporate
some estimates of the output gap; they incorporate a revision to trend productivity; and
they also incorporate assumptions about NAIRU. Some people would debate the validity
of this structure. Certainly, if we continue to have accelerating productivity growth, these
estimates of output gap and NAIRU and so forth may be wrong. But in a time of
uncertainty, it certainly seems that relying on constructs that have helped us bring about
nearly 20 years of better economic conditions--milder cyclical turns, ever lower inflation,
lower unemployment, and more sustained growth--has validity. It seems appropriate to
look back on the things that have helped us create the kind of environment that President
McDonough referred to, one in which more people are working, more people have that
experience of working, and the benefits of growth are shared more fully by all. I think
the argument really turns on whether we want that environment to continue. If we want it
to continue in a way that extends the experience of those 20 years, then we need to be
careful in containing inflation and in following the constructs that have helped us get
where we are.
So, assuming monetary policy should be forward-looking even in a time of
uncertainty, we do need to tighten policy now. I agree with the proposal for 25 basis
points. The next question is what to say about it. Based on the analysis both in the
Greenbook forecast and in our own forecast, I do think we are likely to need to do more.
In that regard, I favor keeping an asymmetric directive. Jack Guynn outlined all of the
many reasons why I think asymmetry makes more sense at this time.
I wonder whether what we’re seeing now in terms of the market reaction to what
we’ve said about our tilt is as much a reaction to the change that we’ve introduced in
announcing the tilt as it is to anything else. Over time, as market participants get used to
our announcing this and moving or not moving at the next meeting, I wonder if their
reactions are going to calm down considerably; perhaps as we get used to it the market
will get used to it as well. In my view one of the reasons we decided to do this was to
improve information to the market from the Committee itself rather than from disparate
members of the Committee. In that regard, the premium is on honesty. In order to be

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honest about what I feel the course of future actions should be, the directive should be
asymmetric.
Finally, to reiterate another point that I believe Jack Guynn mentioned, 25 basis
points, no tilt, but some hawkish language, as has been suggested, may well create a
bigger market reaction when all that comes out. There will be more uncertainty about
how we’re using this language. Frankly, without an asymmetric tilt, I think we’re likely
to see the market get ahead of itself--experience a somewhat euphoric increase, thinking
that we are not engaged in the kind of tightening that I believe most people think is
necessary.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Thank you. As I read the Committee, we’re
strongly in support of a 25 basis point increase and modestly in support of symmetry. So
I would suggest that we read the directive in that context and then proceed to vote.
MR. BERNARD. This time we’re on page 22 of the Bluebook, at the bottom of
the page: “To promote the Committee’s long-run objectives of price stability and
sustainable economic growth, the Committee in the immediate future seeks conditions in
reserve markets consistent with increasing the federal funds rate to an average of around
5 percent. In view of the evidence currently available, the Committee believes that
prospective developments are equally likely to warrant an increase or a decrease in the
federal funds rate operating objective during the intermeeting period.”
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Let’s vote.
MR. BERNARD.
Chairman Greenspan
Vice Chairman McDonough
President Boehne
Governor Ferguson
Governor Gramlich
Governor Kelley
President McTeer
Governor Meyer
President Moskow
President Stern

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes

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CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. I have drafts of a number of different
announcements concerning this decision, and I’ll read the one that I think most closely
reflects the Committee’s views:
The Federal Open Market Committee today voted to raise its
target for the federal funds rate 25 basis points to 5 percent. Last fall
the Committee reduced interest rates to counter a significant seizingup of financial markets in the United States. Since then much of the
financial strain has eased, foreign economies have firmed, and
economic activity in the United States has moved forward at a brisk
pace. Accordingly, the full degree of adjustment is judged no longer
necessary.
Labor markets have continued to tighten over recent quarters, but
strengthening productivity growth has contained inflationary
pressures
.
Owing to the uncertain resolution of the balance of conflicting
forces in the economy going forward, the FOMC has chosen to adopt
a directive that includes no predilection about near-term policy action.
The Committee, nonetheless, recognizes that in the current dynamic
environment it must be especially alert to the emergence, or potential
emergence, of inflationary forces that could undermine economic
growth.
Is that wording satisfactory?
MR. BOEHNE. I think that’s good.
SEVERAL. Yes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Okay.
VICE CHAIRMAN MCDONOUGH. A Nobel prize for Don Kohn!
MR. BOEHNE. Yes.
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. We’re early for lunch, but coffee is available.
[Laughter] August 24 is the date of the next meeting.

END OF MEETING