there once was a man from Phnom Penh
he didn't have a duck or a hen
so he cut off his schlong
fried it up szechuan
now he'll never pee standing up again
Dallas Fed Bank President Gets Poetic
Tue Mar 30,10:34 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Jon Herskovitz
DALLAS (Reuters) - Global investors bet billions of dollars on the carefully crafted statements of the U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites). So what exactly is Dallas Fed Bank President Robert McTeer doing writing limericks about the economy?
McTeer is a member of the Federal Open Market Committee (news - web sites), the Fed's monetary policymaking body and the group responsible for setting interest rates. He has taught economics at universities and written numerous articles on subjects such as the role of productivity growth and the new economy.
He also has a penchant for mixing his high-minded outlook on the U.S. economy with a bit of lower-brow poetry.
"This poetry writing is something that I do for fun, way out on the fringes," McTeer said.
In 2002, he penned a limerick to describe the turnaround in the economy despite predictions of a recession. It read:
There once was an economy on the ropes
That kept dashing our recovery hopes
When we made the concession
To call it a recession
It turned up, and we felt like dopes
McTeer's first haiku, the Japanese poetic form with three unrhymed lines of five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables, was delivered to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites). It was on contemporary monetary policy. That haiku was lost but another macroeconomic haiku can be found on a special section of the Dallas Fed's Web site (http://www.dallasfed.org) called "Rhymes with No Reason."
The "Rhymes" section houses a collection of McTeer's poems and vignettes and brings a bit of levity to a Web site loaded with economic statistics and analysis.
While market players have a tough time interpreting the obtuse and somewhat opaque Fed speak, McTeer can give the current state of the economy in the form of a haiku:
The economy
Is recovering nicely
But without new jobs
'CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR'
He gussied up the sentiment when he addressed a high-powered group of economists and market players in New York with the limerick called "Close but No Cigar":
The recovery is now 2 years old
And maybe it was oversold
Now we've made the discovery
That it's a jobless recovery
It wins the silver, but not the gold
McTeer is considered a "dove" among Fed bank presidents, meaning he does not take as hard of a line as other Open Market Committee members in using monetary policy to stamp out inflation. He has earned the nickname the "lonesome dove" -- also the title of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Texan Larry McMurtry -- for occasionally standing apart from other committee members.
McTeer admits he would not mind being a country music singer and songwriter.
"The only problem is that I am not that good at songwriting and I don't sing all that well," McTeer said.
So the president of the Dallas Fed Bank uses poetry as a creative outlet.
"I do not know anything about poetry. I do not know how to do it right. If I did, it probably wouldn't rhyme and then it probably wouldn't be any fun," he said.
Christopher Rupkey, a senior financial economist for the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York, said McTeer is an important player among the Fed bank presidents. His speeches, often unscripted, are closely watched because they give some insight as to what is happening behind the scenes at the Fed, Rupkey said.
"McTeer is a highly trained economist who also has a common sense view of the economy. He can look at economic actions and understand how they will be perceived by Main Street and Wall Street," Rupkey said.
Fed watchers have said McTeer is one of several candidates mentioned as a possible replacement for Greenspan once he steps down.
McTeer uses his poetry to help connect with audiences such as Rotary clubs or high school teachers when he gives speeches. He delivers his verse to audiences of economists, investors and various groups in Texas and the Southwest that have booked him as a speaker.
He says the poetry is part of his "shtick."
"When somebody invites a Fed person to speak, what they really expect is something like eating spinach. They think it is something they ought to do, but they are not expecting to enjoy it," McTeer said.
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