FOMC Minutes & The Hope For/Against Quantitative Easing

The FOMC Minutes should mostly be known, but investors and speculators look through these in great detail in an effort to garner any hint over whether or not Ben Bernanke and friends are considering more versions of economic assistance via quantitative easing measures. There may be more member for and against this measure now.

Where the report matters is that the reporting dates were as of April 24 and 25 of 2012, and that makes the minutes be before the latest sell-off and before the most recent version of the Euro meltdown took place that has also wrecked the U.S. markets.

The Minutes lack any smoking gun here that would support another new large round of quantitative easing, but they lack a smoking gun that would kill it entirely as well.

The minutes noted, “Some participants stated that exercises using alternative scenarios, with appropriate adjustments, could potentially be helpful for internal deliberations and, thus, should be explored further. However, no decision was made at this meeting regarding future exercises along these lines.”

Here is the formal summary: “Payroll employment continued to move up, and the unemployment rate, while still elevated, declined a little further. Overall consumer price inflation increased somewhat, primarily reflecting higher prices of crude oil and gasoline, but measures of long-run inflation expectations remained stable.”

FULL MINUTES

JON C. OGG