Hi Chip, some U.S. Fed policymakers' recent comments for the threads perusual........ My Boss is up in your town today, at the John Hancock build, he's meeting with a guy who worked at Chase in NYC doing US dollar options and swaps back about the same time I did.
This guy went on to run International Capital Markets Division for Asia working out of Hong Kong so he went a long way...... he's been running a small family hedge fund in your fair city.
I'm trying to put him with a fund family in Chicago we've worked with/for.
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Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:26:24 AM (GMT-06:00)
Provided by: Reuters News
NEW YORK, June 8 (Reuters) - Following Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and St. Louis Fed President William Poole's warnings on inflation early this week, bond investors have sharply raised their expectations of a U.S. interest rate increase after the Fed's June 28-29 policy-setting meeting.
Markets currently believe chances for a 17th consecutive increase in the federal funds rate are around 80 percent, up from about 68 percent on Friday, before a weaker-than-expected U.S. May jobs report.
The following is a summary of recent comments by Federal Reserve policy-makers:
* Denotes voting member of the FOMC in 2006
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* FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD GOVERNOR DONALD KOHN, JUNE 8:
"Price stability is important and I have found the recent
inflation data somewhat troubling.
"They are backward looking ... but they were higher than I had anticipated and that raises a warning flag.
"At this stage, we have to acknowledge that ... yes, the economy is slowing down and that will help to dampen inflation pressures, but at the same time, there are some danger signs out there that we need to be quite attentive to."
* ATLANTA FED PRESIDENT JACK GUYNN, JUNE 7:
"I am not personally, in terms of my own views, going to take a risk that some of this (rise in prices) is transitory and will go away in short order. It is so much harder to get the genie back in the bottle if (we) let inflation get away from us."
* FEDERAL RESERVE GOVERNOR MARK OLSON ,JUNE 7: ,
"The overall U.S. national mortgage portfolio is very strong, but we clearly see there are some pockets, some markets, where we are seeing rising delinquencies, and that continues to be a concern for us."
KANSAS CITY FED PRESIDENT THOMAS HOENIG, JUNE 6:
"When I look at the inflation expectations, I have seen some movement up but I've seen that in the past. So I think it is frankly too early to tell in terms of whether we have this issue of being behind the curve.
"I think we need to be watchful and alert. But I think at this point we have only recently moved the policy rate to the 5 percent level. We know that monetary policy acts with a lag, we know that those effects will still be months ahead of us, and so we'll see how this moves."
* FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD GOVERNOR SUSAN BIES, JUNE 6:
"We're in the range (on interest rates) where different models say we should be for the economy. As a result, we are in a period where we're in transition and transition means we don't exactly know where we are going to stop.
"Part of the challenge is that monetary policy works with a lag so the 16 (rate) increases we've had so far are still feeding their way through the economy and we're beginning to see some of the impacts happening in real estate markets.
"On the other hand, while that may slow the economy, we're seeing that (core) inflation in the last three quarters has been running in the high 2 percent range, which personally makes me very uncomfortable."
ST. LOUIS FED PRESIDENT WILLIAM POOLE, JUNE 6:
"If inflation turns out to exceed our expectations, our target range, I do not believe we can count on a slowing economy to bring inflation down, by itself, quickly.
"We need to have an upside bias to our setting of the Federal funds rate.
"And I think it would be a lot safer strategy to err on the side of going a little too far, in the expectation that when that became clear, you could back off."
* FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN BEN BERNANKE, JUNE 5:
"The Committee will be vigilant to ensure that the recent pattern of elevated monthly core inflation readings is not sustained.
"While monthly inflation data are volatile, core inflation measured over the past three to six months has reached a level that, if sustained, would be at or above the upper end of the range that many economists, including myself, would consider consistent with price stability and the promotion of maximum long-run growth.
"These are unwelcome developments.
"The Committee must continue to resist any tendency for increases in energy and commodity prices to become permanently embedded in core inflation. The best way to prevent increases in energy and commodity prices from leading to persistently higher rates of inflation is by anchoring the public's long-term inflation expectations.
"Achieving this requires, first, a strong commitment of policy-makers to maintaining price stability, which my colleagues and I share, and, second, a consistent pattern of policy responses to emerging developments as needed to accomplish that objective.
"With the economy now evidently in a period of transition, monetary policy must be conducted with great care and with close attention to the evolution of the economic outlook as implied by incoming information. Given recent developments, the medium-term outlook for inflation will receive particular scrutiny."
* NEW YORK FED PRESIDENT TIMOTHY GEITHNER, MAY 31:
"We are now in the process of emerging from this rather exceptional period, and this provides us with an interesting context in which to reflect on uncertainty and how it affects the conduct of monetary policy and communications about monetary policy."
CHICAGO FED PRESIDENT MICHAEL MOSKOW, MAY 30:
"We know the dangers of inflation getting built into the economy. We know that inflation can have a great deal of inertia and we have to be very diligent and very careful to make sure that doesn't happen.
"If people do not have confidence in the Fed then I think inflation expectations expectations could drift up, and that would be a very serious problem."
* SAN FRANCISCO FED PRESIDENT JANET YELLEN, MAY 27:
A depreciating dollar "would appear to call for a response of tighter policy" by potentially stimulating export demand while raising import prices.
* FED GOVERNOR RANDALL KROSZNER, MAY 24:
"We want to think ... about the unpredictable lags that can sometimes come from changes in interest rates and also changes in energy prices. We are mindful of looking at all the pieces of data on that ... we want to be looking through the windshield, we don't want to be just looking at the rear view mirror." |
