Final reflections on the Fed statement
Krishna Guha of the Financial times on whether to classify the Fed’s statement as hawkish or dovish Read more
…and shaves agency debt purchases
The Fed also shaved $25bn off its planned agency debt purchases, writes Krishna Guha of the Financial Times Read more
Fed changes its statement
The Fed made a change to its key guidance on interest rates – even if it was only a baby step, writes Krishna Guha of the Financial Times Read more
The Fed and its “extended period” language
Will they / won’t they? All eyes will be on the Fed statement issued around 2pm EST Wednesday to see if there is any change to the “extended period” language the US central bank uses to guide market expectations of the future path of interest rates (last FOMC statement).
The current formula is as follows: “the Committee…continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.” Translated from Fedspeak: the committee does not expect to raise interest rates from the current level of near zero for a period some officials define as at least six months, others as longer than this.
As I first reported in the FT ten days ago – and my excellent competitor Jon Hilsenrath of the WSJ subsequently confirmed – Fed officials are starting to mull changing the “extended period” language. I/we know this for a fact. The question is whether they are far enough along in this process to make a change at this meeting.
Unlike most analysts, I don’t think we can rule this out. But I do agree that the likelihood of a change this time is a good deal less than 50-50 – for two reasons Read more
To continue QE or not to continue QE
It is very difficult to predict whether the Bank of England will extend its programme of quantitative easing tomorrow becasue the Bank has been so unclear about the criteria it will use to judge the success of QE and the state of the economy. All bets are off writes Chris Giles of the Financial Times Read more
Supervision and growth
The ECB does not see economic growth as an objective of stronger regulation, writes Ralph Atkins in a Financial Times blog Read more
A deluge of G20 meetings
Pity the poor finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 leading countries. They have to hike up to St Andrews in Scotland on Friday, with ghastly weather predicted, to hold a pretty pointless meeting writes Chris Giles of the Financial Times Read more
Bad news for RBS, less-bad-than-recent news for the United States, and good news for Asia, all rounded off with a warning on asset bubbles. And the market price of water in Yemen has quadrupled in four years Read more
Economics news headlines from around the web Read more
Japanese deflation, unknown unknowns and plain old rain
Masaaki Shirakawa, governor of the Bank of Japan, offered a concise defence of the central bank’s calm response to the return of deflation. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
