Fed's meetings getting more complicated, says new research

New York

EIGHT times a year, members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and presidents of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks get together to discuss US monetary policy. Minutes of these Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, meetings are released a few weeks after each gathering and are inevitably parsed by investors, traders and economists who are all seeking clues as to the thinking behind US interest rates and other monetary programmes conducted by the central bank.

New research by Fed board economists does some word- crunching on these FOMC minutes and suggests that central bank meetings have been getting a little more uncertain and a lot more complicated in the years since the financial crisis. This isn't necessarily too surprising. Fed officials speaking in recent days alone have taken opposing views on when the central bank should increase interest rates. In a speech last Thursday, Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota said that the US central bank should hold off raising interest rates this year.