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发帖数: 3577 | 1 The Federal Reserve, already under fire from Congress over how a previous
leak of sensitive information was handled, revealed Friday that confidential
staff forecasts from its meeting six weeks ago were mistakenly put on its
public website.
The release is a bounty for Fed watchers, offering a rare glimpse inside the
Fed’s thinking about the road ahead for the economy and policy. But the
disclosure also could increase pressure on the U.S. central bank for reform
from House Republicans already upset with how a prior leak of sensitive
information was handled.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Republican from Texas who chairs the House
Financial Services panel, said in a statement that “it regrettably appears
once again that proper internal controls are not in place to safeguard
confidential Federal Reserve information. To say these recurring leaks at
the Fed are troubling is a serious understatement and points to the urgent
need for accountability reforms.”
Usually, Fed staff projections for interest rates are kept confidential for
five years. The Fed said that the information was put on the website on June
29. Once the leak was discovered, the Fed said it decided to publicly
release the material.
Read more: Here are the staff forecasts the Fed accidently leaked
http://tinyurl.com/nhpuavp
According to the projections, the staff of the central bank told officials
six weeks ago that they expect the key federal-funds rate to reach 0.35% at
the end of the year, signaling that officials will only raise rates once in
2015. Staff members also expected to see rates rise gradually to 1.26% by
the end of 2016 and 2.12% by the end of 2017 before hitting 3.34% at the
close of 2020.
That is a more aggressive pace of rate increases than the market is
currently pricing in, said economists at BNP Paribas.
Despite that, the Fed staff projected no sharp move in 10-year Treasury note
rates as the Fed tightened policy. Instead, bond rates would reach 2.63% in
the fourth quarter of this year, 3.14% by the end of 2016 and 4.20% by the
end of 2020, according to the projections.
The Fed staff presents a number of different forecasts for Fed officials at
their meetings. The forecast released was the “base case” decided on by
the Fed policy committee as the most likely to occur, said Robert Brusca,
chief economist at FAO Economics and a former Fed staffer.
Michael Gapen, economist at Barclays said the 0.35% forecast for the funds
rate by the end of 2015 is consistent with a rate hike in September and a
pause in December or two rate hikes before year-end. He said it was not
consistent with a December hike alone.
He cautioned that the staff view is a “reasonable path” for interest rates
and not the “likely path.” Each of the 17 members of the Fed's policy
committee have their own individual forecasts, he noted.
Other nuggets from the projections:
• The Fed staff put potential GDP growth at 1.6% in 2015 and just 1.8%
in 2020.
• The Fed staff does not see core inflation hitting the U.S. central
bank’s target of 2% over the next five years.
• The Fed staff sees the unemployment rate only inching lower to 5.15%
by 2018.
Hensarling and other Republican members of Finance panel have said the Fed
did not properly handle an internal probe of an alleged leak of central-bank
deliberations in the fall of 2012.
The lawmakers want Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen to giving the committee
information about the internal probe of the alleged leak, but she has
refused, citing an investigation by the Fed’s inspector general and by the
Justice Department.
The Fed said the latest leak of the staff projections will also be referred
to the inspector general.
http://tinyurl.com/qeotovd |
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