Inflation expectations down – Cleveland Fed
It’s interesting to note how much of decline in the Cleveland Fed’s measure of inflation expectations came before the latest round of market turmoil.
The ugly truth: monetary policy’s limits
Two of the three FOMC dissenters on Wednesday said why they broke ranks at last week’s meeting.
Aside from their view that the conditional commitment to keep rates on hold until 2013 looked suspiciously like the Fed was trying to buoy financial markets, there was another common strand to their discord.
Both Mr Fisher and Mr Plosser claimed monetary policy was limited in what it could do to spur growth. This is becoming a popular argument among senior central bankers. Read more
A gloomy ECB voice
Gloom about eurozone economic prospects has reached the European Central Bank, with a governing council member warning of a possible “Japanese-style” period of weak growth – but also low inflation.
Comments by Ewald Nowotny, Austria’s central bank governor, in an interview with his country’s Wirtschaftsblatt, suggested that this week’s weak growth data could change the thinking at the ECB, making further interest rate rises less likely. They may fuel speculation that a cut in official borrowing costs might even become possible. Read more
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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
