Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And we turn to the Federal Reserve on an unusual day of both substance and appearances. (link opens in new page)
BEN BERNANKE, Federal Reserve Chairman: Good afternoon.
JEFFREY BROWN: It was a standard greeting but hardly a standard setting, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held the first regularly scheduled news conference in the central bank's 98-year history.
The Fed has long been seen as a secretive, even mysterious institution, pulling the levers of the economy Wizard of Oz-like from behind a magic curtain.
Bernanke said he hopes to change that.
BEN BERNANKE: I personally have always been a big believer in providing as much information as you can to help the public understand what you're doing, to help the markets understand what you're doing, and to be accountable to the public for what you're doing.
Now, of course, the Fed didn't do this for a long time, and I think the counterargument has always been that if -- there was a risk that the chairman speaking might create unnecessary volatility in financial markets or may not be necessary, given all the other sources of -- of information that come out of the Federal Reserve.
It was our judgment after thinking about this for some time that, at this point, the additional benefits from more information, more transparency, meeting the press directly, outweighed some of these -- some of these risks.
I welcome the new openness. Having said that, we need to realize that the Fed does NOT have a magic wand. There are things in our economy that they cannot have much, or any, effect on.
In my opinion jobs is something the Fed cannot directly effect. That is to say, we should NOT be looking to the Fed for increasing jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment