<i>Morgan Stanley - "FOMC Preview"</i>

Heute und morgen findet das obligatorische FOMC statt. Heute um 20.15 Uhr wird der Öffentlichkeit mitgeteilt werden, ob wieder an den US Leitzinsen gedreht wird oder nicht.

Anbei ein aktueller Kommentar der US Investmentbank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter :

United States: FOMC Preview

David Greenlaw (New York)

Fed officials gather in Washington on Tuesday to chart the future course of monetary policy. Given that they clearly signaled a desire to leave policy alone for awhile in the wake of the 50 bp move triggered in November, and given recent economic and market developments, we strongly suspect that the funds rate target will be held steady at this meeting. The labor market report released on Friday was weak, but not weak enough in our view to alter the outcome of the FOMC meeting. We also believe the Fed will leave the risk assessment in neutral and issue a statement that cites some encouraging factors but cautions that we are not entirely out of the woods yet.

One of the ways the FOMC signaled an intention to leave policy on hold for awhile following the November meeting was to shift the risk assessment back to neutral. This raises some issues because the Fed had previously tried to back away from such a tie-in to the policy outlook. To recap, two and a half years ago the Fed announced a change in the language it uses to describe "its assessment of future developments." The old policy bias language was dropped and a new risk assessment approach was adopted. Under the new procedure, the statement to be released after every FOMC meeting would include an assessment of the risk of "heightened inflation pressures" versus the risk of "economic weakness." The FOMC would indicate whether they perceive these risks to be balanced or tilted in one direction. The goal was to allow the Fed to place less emphasis on the near-term course of policy and more emphasis on its longer-run economic objectives. There had been concern that the announcement of the Fed's policy bias at the conclusion of its meetings "had led to some misinterpretations of the Committee's intentions and seemed to have added to volatility in financial markets" (October 1999 FOMC minutes).

However, in the wake of the November FOMC meeting, the Fed appears to have gotten back into the same boat it was in a few years ago. Deciding that a 50 bp cut was warranted but apparently concerned that a somewhat more aggressive action than the markets were anticipating might trigger fears that the Fed was panicking, Greenspan et al decided to switch the risk assessment back to neutral. This was intended to signal that they did not perceive a need for further near-term rate cuts and that they were merely combining the separate 25 bp reductions that the market had been expecting in November and December into one 50 bp move. So, they are again using the risk assessment/bias as a tool to signal their policy intentions. After all, at this stage is the US economy close to an equal trade-off between the risk of economic weakness and the risk of inflation? Clearly, in our opinion, the answer is no. In subsequent public statements, Greenspan and other Fed officials tried to defend their use of the risk assessment by arguing that the risks are "more balanced" in the wake of the 50 bp move. But, if the Fed really wanted to distinguish an economic risk assessment from the policy outlook, it would have continued to tilt toward a concern about economic weakness even though it may not have perceived the need for another near-term rate cut. So, we've come full circle and the risk assessment is again being used as a policy signal. Going forward, we can probably look for the FOMC to shift the risk assessment to a concern about inflation a meeting or two ahead of the point at which they expect to be in tightening mode.

Finally, this week's meeting will be the last of the year. Looking ahead, the annual rotation of voting members in 2003 means that current voters Santomero (Philadelphia), Jordan (Cleveland), Stern (Minneapolis) and McTeer (Dallas) will be replaced by Guynn (Atlanta), Broaddus (Richmond), Parry (San Fran), and Moskow (Chicago). Guynn, Parry, and Moskow have never dissented although the latter two tend to tilt toward the hawkish end of the spectrum. Broaddus has dissented 6 times out of 28 total votes during previous tenure as a voting member -- always in favor of a tighter policy. Of course, Greenspan runs the show and the make-up of the FOMC in 2003 does not seem all that radically different. Moreover, Broaddus seems to have lost some of his hawkish zeal of late. Still, it does appear that the incoming members of the FOMC might be a tad more hawkish than the present group -- especially with McTeer taken out of the equation.