March 15, 2011 FOMC Minutes

Our reading

The minutes are consistent with the statement because both documents convey the same key assessments and policy decisions: the economic recovery is strengthening, labor markets are gradually improving, underlying inflation remains subdued, recent commodity price increases are expected to be transitory, and the FOMC will maintain its asset purchase program and exceptionally low federal funds rate to support the recovery and ensure inflation aligns with its mandate.

FOMC minutes

Voting for this action: Ben Bernanke, William C. Dudley, Elizabeth Duke, Charles L. Evans, Richard W. Fisher, Narayana Kocherlakota, Charles I. Plosser, Sarah Bloom Raskin, Daniel K. Tarullo, and Janet L. Yellen.

Voting against this action: None.

The Committee then discussed a recommendation, from its subcommittee on communications, that the Chairman conduct regular press conferences. Participants generally saw such press conferences as a potentially useful way to enhance transparency and strength-en the Committee's policy communications. They discussed various implications of, and alternative arrangements for, such press conferences. They generally endorsed holding press conferences after the four FOMC meetings each year for which participants provide numerical projections of several key economic variables, conditional on appropriate monetary policy. While those projections already are made public in the minutes of the relevant FOMC meetings, press conferences could be helpful in explaining how the Committee's monetary policy strategy is informed by participants' projections of the rates of output growth, unemployment, and inflation likely to prevail during each of the next few years, and by their assessments of the values of those variables that will prove most consistent, over the longer run, with the Committee's mandate to promote both maximum employment and stable prices. The outcome of the discussion was a decision that the Chairman would begin holding press conferences effective with the April 26-27, 2011, meeting.

It was agreed that the next meeting of the Committee would be held on Tuesday-Wednesday, April 26-27, 2011. The meeting adjourned at 2:35 p.m. on March 15, 2011.