Federal Open Market Committee Minutes - Key Quotes
For most major industry groups, factory utilization rates declined relative to their levels in July and remained below their long-run averages. Available forward-looking indicators pointed to a significant downturn in manufacturing output in coming months.
Conditions in markets for repurchase agreements, or repos, arranged using certain types of collateral [...]
Federal Open Market Committee Minutes - Key Quotes
Given the recent intensification and broadening of the global financial crisis, FOMC participants viewed the outlook for economic growth and employment as having worsened significantly since June.
In the forecast prepared for the meeting, the staff lowered its projection for economic activity in the second half of 2008 as [...]
Federal Open Market Committee Minutes - Key Quotes
Committee members generally saw the current stance of monetary policy as consistent with a gradual strengthening of economic growth beginning next year, although they recognized that recent financial developments had boosted the downside risks to the economic outlook.
Indeed, it was noted that, with elevated inflation still a concern [...]
Federal Open Market Committee Minutes - Key Quotes
Unit labor costs apparently continued to increase at a restrained pace during the second quarter, reflecting only moderate gains in worker compensation and relatively strong productivity performance, with little sign of higher overall inflation passing through to higher worker compensation.
Corporate bond issuance slowed further, as did lending by [...]
Federal Open Market Committee Minutes - Key Quotes
…members generally agreed that the risks to growth had diminished somewhat since the time of the last FOMC meeting while the upside risks to inflation had increased. Nonetheless, the risks to growth remained tilted to the downside.
Mr. Fisher dissented because he preferred an increase in the target federal [...]
Federal Open Market Committee Minutes - Key Quotes
Participants stressed the difficulty of gauging the appropriate stance of policy in current circumstances…Several participants expressed the view that the easing in monetary policy since last fall had not as yet led to a loosening in overall financial conditions, but rather had prevented financial conditions from tightening as [...]
