Federal Open Market Cat
Twelve cats vote. You are not one of them.
For release at 2:00 p.m. EDT · COMMITTEE OFFLINE
Twelve cats vote. You are not one of them.
For release at 2:00 p.m. EDT · COMMITTEE OFFLINE
The Federal Open Market Committee meets eight times a year and issues a short statement. Nothing else on a published schedule gets read this closely, and the first thing anyone does with it is line it up against the last one to see which words changed. The Atlanta Fed publishes that comparison. So does every wire service.
This Committee is cats, and it sets one rate. Everything the page prints about how the real one works is true: nineteen participants and twelve votes, dissents recorded by name, the blackout, the anonymous dots, the two week old Beige Book, and the lag that means today's decision lands on a Chair who has not been appointed yet.
The only cat ever carried on a finance ministry's payroll was Gladstone, a black shorthair hired as Chief Mouser to HM Treasury in June 2016. He caught his first mouse within 48 hours. He never set a rate.