Full text of U.S. Financial Data : February 1, 2001
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February 1, 2001 USFinancialData THE WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS: ■ At its Jan. 31 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to lower its target for the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to 5.5 percent. After the meeting, the FOMC issued the following statement: Consumer and business confidence has eroded further, exacerbated by rising energy costs that continue to drain consumer purchasing power and press on business profit margins. Partly as a consequence, retail sales and business spending on capital equipment have weakened appreciably. In response, manufacturing production has been cut back sharply, with new technologies appearing to have accelerated the response of production and demand to potential excesses in the stock of inventories and capital equipment. Taken together, and with inflation contained, these circumstances have called for a rapid and forceful response of monetary policy. The longer-term advances in technology and accompanying gains in productivity, however, exhibit few signs of abating and these gains, along with the lower interest rates, should support growth of the economy over time. Nonetheless, the Committee continues to believe that . . . the risks are weighted mainly toward conditions that may generate economic weakness in the foreseeable future. ■ According to the advance report, real GDP rose at a 1.4 percent annual rate during the fourth quarter. Following a 5 percent increase in 1999 (Q4/Q4), real GDP increased 3.5 percent in 2000, the smallest gain in five years. All data are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise indicated. U.S. Financial Data is published weekly by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. For more information on data, please call (314) 444-8590. To be added to the mailing list, please call (314) 444-8808 or (314) 444-8809. Information in this publication is also included in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) electronic bulletin board at (314) 621-1824 or internet World Wide Web server at www.stls.frb.org/fred.