FOMC Press Conference - 2012-12-12
Central bank: fed | Type: press_conference | Date: 2012-12-12

December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
Transcript of Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference
December 12, 2012
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Good afternoon.
It’s been about three and a half years since the economic recovery began. The economy
continues to expand at a moderate pace. Unfortunately, however, unemployment remains high.
About 5 million people—more than 40 percent of the unemployed—have been with out a job for
six months or more, and millions more who say they would like full-time work have been able to
find only part-time employment or have stopped looking entirely. The conditions now prevailing
in the job market represent an enormous waste of human and economic potential. A return to
broad-based prosperity will require sustained improvement in the job market, which in turn
requires stronger economic growth. Meanwhile, apart from some temporary fluctuations that
largely reflected swings in energy prices, inflation has remained tame and appears likely to run at
or below the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC’s) 2 percent objective in coming
quarters and over the longer term.
Against a macroeconomic backdrop that includes both high unemployment and subdued
inflation, the FOMC will maintain its highly accommodative policy. Today the Committee took
several steps. First, it decided to continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities
(MBS), initiated at the September meeting, at a pace of $40 billion per month. Second, the
Committee decided to purchase longer-term Treasury securities, initially at a pace of $45 billion
per month, after its current program to extend the average maturity of its holdings is completed
at the end of the year. In continuing its asset purchases, the Committee seeks to maintain
downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and to keep financial conditions
accommodative, thereby promoting hiring and economic growth while ensuring that inflation
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
over time is close to our 2 percent objective. Finally, the Committee today also modified its
guidance about future rate policy to provide more information to the public about how it
anticipates it will react to evolving economic conditions. I will return to this change in our
communication after discussing our decision to continue asset purchases.
Although the Committee’s announcement today specified the initial monthly pace and
composition of asset purchases, it did not give specific dates at which the program may be
modified or ended. Instead, the pattern of future asset purchases will depend on the Committee’s
evaluation of incoming information, in two respects.
First, we expect to continue asset purchases until we see a substantial improvement in the
outlook for the labor market, in a context of price stability. In assessing the extent of progress,
the Committee will be evaluating a range of labor market indicators, including the
unemployment rate, payroll employment, hours worked, and labor force participation, among
others. Because increases in demand and production are normally precursors to improvements in
labor market conditions, we will also be looking carefully at the pace of economic activity more
Second, the Committee will be monitoring economic and financial developments to
assess both the efficacy and possible drawbacks of its asset purchase program. The Federal
Reserve’s asset purchases over the past few years have provided important support to the
economy, for example, by helping to keep mortgage rates historically low. The Committee
expects this policy tool to continue to be effective and the costs and risks to remain manageable,
but as the program continues, we will be regularly updating those assessments. If future
evidence suggests that the program’s effectiveness has declined, or if potential unintended side
effects or risks become apparent as the balance sheet grows, we will modify the program as
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
appropriate. More generally, the Committee intends to be flexible in varying the pace of
securities purchases in response to information bearing on the outlook or on the perceived
benefits and costs of the program.
Unlike the explicitly quantitative criteria associated with the Committee’s forward
guidance about the federal funds rate, which I will discuss in a moment, the criteria the
Committee will use to make decisions about the pace and extent of its asset purchase program
are qualitative; in particular, continuation of asset purchases is tied to our seeing substantial
improvement in the outlook for the labor market. Because we expect to learn more over time
about the efficacy and potential costs of asset purchases in the current economic context, we
believe that qualitative guidance is more appropriate at this time.
In today’s statement, the Committee also recast its forward guidance to clarify how it
expects its target for the federal funds rate to depend on future economic developments.
Specifically, the Committee anticipates that exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate
are likely to be warranted “at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6½ percent,
inflation over the period between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than half a
percentage point above the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run goal, and longer-term inflation
expectations continue to be well anchored.” This formulation is a change from earlier statements
in which forward guidance about the federal funds rate was expressed in terms of a date; for
example, in the statements following its September and October meetings, the Committee
indicated that it anticipated that exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate are likely to be
warranted “at least through mid-2015.” The modified formulation makes more explicit the
FOMC’s intention to maintain accommodation as long as needed to promote a stronger
economic recovery in the context of price stability, a strategy that we believe will help support
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
household and business confidence and spending. By tying future monetary policy more
explicitly to economic conditions, this formulation of our policy guidance should also make
monetary policy more transparent and predictable to the public.
The change in the form of the Committee’s forward guidance does not in itself imply any
change in the Committee’s expectations about the likely future path of the federal funds rate
since the October meeting. In particular, the Committee expects that the stated threshold for
unemployment will not be reached before mid-2015 and projects that inflation will remain close
to 2 percent over that period. Thus, given the Committee’s current outlook, the guidance
introduced today is consistent with the Committee’s earlier statements that “exceptionally low
levels for the federal funds rate are likely to be warranted at least through mid-2015.”
Let me emphasize that the 6½ percent threshold for the unemployment rate should not be
interpreted as the Committee’s longer-term objective for unemployment. Indeed, in the
economic projections submitted in conjunction with today’s meeting, the central tendency of
participants’ estimates of the longer-run normal rate of unemployment is 5.2 to 6.0 percent.
However, because changes in monetary policy affect the economy with a lag, the Committee
believes that it likely will need to begin moving away from a highly accommodative policy
stance before the economy reaches maximum employment. Waiting until maximum
employment is achieved before beginning the process of removing policy accommodation could
lead to an undesirable overshooting of potential output and compromise the FOMC’s longer-term
inflation objective of 2 percent. As the FOMC statement makes clear, the Committee anticipates
that policy under the new guidance will be fully consistent with continued progress against
unemployment and with inflation remaining close to the Committee’s 2 percent objective over
the longer term.
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
Although the modified guidance should provide greater clarity about how the Committee
expects to respond to incoming data, it by no means puts monetary policy on autopilot. In this
regard, let me make several points.
First, as the statement notes, the Committee views its current low-rate policy as likely to
be appropriate at least until the specified thresholds are met. Reaching one of those thresholds,
however, will not automatically trigger immediate reduction in policy accommodation. For
example, if unemployment were to decline to slightly below 6½ percent at a time when inflation
and inflation expectations were subdued and were projected to remain so, the Committee might
judge an immediate increase in its target for the federal funds rate to be inappropriate.
Ultimately, in deciding when and how quickly to reduce policy accommodation, the Committee
will follow a balanced approach in seeking to mitigate deviations of inflation from its longer-run
2 percent goal and deviations of employment from its estimated maximum level.
Second, the Committee recognizes that no single indicator provides a complete
assessment of the state of the labor market and therefore will consider changes in the
unemployment rate within the broader context of labor market conditions. For example, in
evaluating a given decline in the unemployment rate, the Committee will also take into account
the extent to which that decline was associated with increases in employment and hours worked,
as opposed to, say, increases in the number of discouraged workers and falling labor force
participation. The Committee will also consider whether the improvement in the unemployment
rate appears sustainable.
Third, the Committee chose to express the inflation threshold in terms of projected
inflation between one and two years ahead, rather than in terms of current inflation. The
Committee took this approach to make clear that it intends to look through purely transitory
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
fluctuations in inflation, such as those induced by short-term variations in the prices of
internationally traded commodities, and to focus instead on the underlying inflation trend. In
making its collective judgment about the underlying inflation trend, the Committee will consider
a variety of indicators, including measures such as median, trimmed mean, and core inflation; the
views of outside forecasters; and the predictions of econometric and statistical models of
inflation. Also, the Committee will pay close attention to measures of inflation expectations to
ensure that those expectations remain well anchored.
Finally, the Committee will continue to monitor a wide range of information on economic
and financial developments to ensure that policy is conducted in a manner consistent with our
dual mandate.
It’s worth noting that the goals of the FOMC’s asset purchases and of its federal funds
rate guidance are somewhat different. The goal of the asset purchase program is to increase the
near-term momentum of the economy by fostering more-accommodative financial conditions,
while the purpose of the rate guidance is to provide information about the future circumstances
under which the Committee would contemplate reducing accommodation. I would emphasize
that a decision by the Committee to end asset purchases, whenever that point is reached, would
not be a turn to tighter policy. While in that circumstance the Committee would no longer be
increasing policy accommodation, its policy stance would remain highly supportive of growth.
Only at some later point would the Committee begin actually removing accommodation through
rate increases. Moreover, as I have discussed today, the decisions to modify the asset purchase
program and to undertake rate increases are tied to different criteria.
In conclusion, the FOMC’s actions today are part of our ongoing efforts to support
economic recovery and job creation while maintaining price stability. As I have often stressed,
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
however, monetary policy has its limits; only the private and public sectors working together can
get the U.S. economy fully back on track. In particular, it will be critical that fiscal policymakers
come together soon to achieve longer-term fiscal sustainability without adopting policies that
could derail the ongoing recovery.
Thank you. I would be happy to answer your questions.
STEVE LIESMAN. Mr. Chairman, Steve Liesman from CNBC. I guess I have a lot of
questions but I’ll just offer up two here. Why are there different targets for QE and for the funds
rate? What does that achieve? Secondly, what good is a target if you have to make reference to
calendar dates in the statement itself, which is the thing you got away from. You had to point
out in the statement that it’s not substantially different from the calendar dates we set back in
October. Do you have to keep doing that from now on to make it clear that—and then just
thirdly, I guess I know I said two—
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. I’m going to forget.
STEVE LIESMAN. But then you have another paragraph after that that says it’s not just
target it’s something else. So, it’s unclear to me what good these targets are if you have to
reference a calendar date, and then you kind of say in the next paragraph it’s not really targets.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, so first, the—as I said —th e asset purchases and the
rate increases have different objectives. The asset purchases are about creating some near-term
momentum in the economy, trying to strengthen growth and job creation in the near term, and
the increases in the federal funds rate target, when they ultimately occur, are about reducing
accommodation. Two very different objectives. Secondly, the asset purchases are a less
well-understood tool. We have—we’ll be learning over time about how efficacious they are,
about what costs they may carry with them in terms of unintended consequences that they might
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
create, and we’ll be seeing how—what else happens in the economy that can affect, you know,
the level of unemployment, for example, that we hope to achieve. And so, for that reason, as I
discussed in my opening remarks, we decided to make the criteria for asset purchases qualitative
at this time because we have a number of different things that we need to look at as we go
forward. Rate increases, by contrast, are well understood, and we understand the relationship
between those rate increases and the state of the economy. And so we’ve been able to give
somewhat more quantitative, more specific guidance in that respect. With respect to the date, in
the transition today, we wanted to make clear that the change in guidance did not—it happens to
be the case that it doesn’t change our mid-2015 expectation. Going forward, we’ll drop the date
and rely on the conditionality, and that has, I think, a very important advantage which is that if
news comes in that the economy is stronger or weaker, then financial markets and the public will
be able to adjust their expectations for when policy tightening will occur without the Committee
having to go through a process of changing its date in a nontransparent way, so I think that’s
beneficial. Does that cover your—okay.
MARCY GORDON. Mr. Chairman, what prompted the Committee to make the decision
at this particular time to specify targets? And, by taking an unemployment rate that is quite low
compared to currently, does that shift the balance of priorities in terms of your dual mandate,
closer more in the direction of reducing unemployment rather than inflationary pressures?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. That’s a very good question. We took the change today
after a good bit of discussion. We had a very substantial discussion of the threshold approach at
our last meeting. And we felt it was ready to go, ready to put out. We—while there are different
views on aspects of the threshold approach, there was a lot of agreement that having a more
explicit connection between rate policy and the state of the economy was more transparent and
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
more helpful to the markets and to the public than our date-based guidance, and therefore, there
was a general view that, at some point at least, that we should switch to that kind of guidance.
So we do hope that it’ll be more helpful and give markets more information about how we’re
going to respond going forward. It is not a change in our relative balance, weights, towards
inflation and unemployment—by no means. First of all, with respect to inflation, we remain
completely committed to our 2 percent longer-run objective. Moreover, we expect our forecast,
as you can see from the Summary of Economic Projections; our forecasts are that inflation will
actually remain, despite this threshold of 2½, that inflation will actually remain at or below
2 percent going forward. And so—and finally, the thresholds that we have put out are entirely
consistent with our long-standing views on what the rate path has to be, what the path of interest
rates has to be, in order to achieve improvement in the labor market while keeping inflation close
to target. So we— I think both sides of the mandate are well-served here. There is no real
change in policy. What it is instead is an attempt to clarify the relationship between policy and
economic conditions.
MARCY GORDON. Could I ask, also, given that the— your economic projections are all
the more important now that you’ve specified these targets, is it difficult to put forward these
projections now given the uncertainty over the fiscal cliff? How sort of plastic are these?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Are you talking about the SEP projections?
MARCY GORDON. Yes.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, clearly the fiscal cliff is having effects on the
economy. Even though we’ve not yet even reached the point of the fiscal cliff potentially
kicking in, it’s already affecting business investment and hiring decisions by creating uncertainty
or creating pessimism. We saw what happened recently to consumer sentiment, which fell,
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
presumably in part because of concerns about the fiscal cliff. So, clearly, this is a major risk
factor and a major source of uncertainty about the economy going forward. I would suspect and,
although the participants don’t all make this explicit, but I would suspect that what they are
assuming in their projections is that the fiscal cliff gets resolved in some intermediate way,
whereby there is still some fiscal drag but not as much as implied by the entire fiscal cliff. So I
think that’s probably the underlying assumption that most people took when they made their
projections. But as you— you’re absolutely right that there is a lot of uncertainty right now and if
the fiscal cliff situation turns out to be resolved in a way very different from our expectations,
I’m sure you would see changes in the forecast.
ALISTER BULL. Alister Bull from Reuters. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Could
you talk about whether the decision to maintain the monthly bond purchases at 85 billion a
month represents a ramping up or additional easing to Fed policy, because you’re now going to
be adding a little bit more to the size of balance sheet? And also, you know, you’ve talked about
maintaining the asset purchases until you see a substantial improvement in the outlook for the
labor market, and you’ve said that you want to take a qualitative approach, but you’ve also got
this 6½ percent inflation threshold out there as well. So, could you talk about what sort of
evidence you’d see to sort of make you change the pace or slow the pace of purchases?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. The first part of your question was?
ALISTER BULL. Is this an additional stimulus or are you—
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. No, I think this is really a continuation of what we said in
September. You recall in September we expressed dissatisfaction with progress in the labor
market. We, at that point, we began the $40 billion per month of MBS purchases and we said
that unless we saw substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market that we would
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
undertake additional asset purchases or other actions. And that’s what we’ve done today is
simply follow through on what we said we would do in September. I don’t think that we have,
relative to last month, I don’t think we have significantly added to accommodation. The reason
is that, at least in my view and I think many of my colleagues’, that what matters primarily is the
mix of assets on the balance sheet, on the asset side of the balance sheet. So what’s important is
the fact that we’re acquiring Treasury securities and MBS, taking those out of the market, you
know, forcing investors into other closely related assets and that’s where the stimulus comes
from, not so much in the size of the balance sheet per se. So, in my judgment, the amount of
stimulus is more or less the same, it’s just being continued. It’s a follow-through from what we
saw in September. In terms of criteria, again, what we’ve done is we’ve announced an initial
amount of 85 billion a month of purchases. We are prepared to vary that as new information
comes in. For example, if the economy’s outlook gets noticeably stronger, we would
presumably begin to ramp down the level of purchases. But again, the problem with giving a
specific number is that there are multiple criteria on which we make this decision. We’ll be
looking at the outlook for labor market, which is very important, but we’ll also be looking at
other factors that may be affecting the outlook for the economy. For example, I hope it won’t
happen but if the fiscal cliff occurs, as I’ve said many times, I don’t think the Federal Reserve
has the tools to offset that event and, in that case, we obviously have to temper our expectations
about what we can accomplish. Likewise, as I said, we’ll also be looking at the efficacy and
costs of our program and if, you know, we find, we expect it to be efficacious but if we find that
it’s not working as well as we hoped or if the various costs are emerging that we had not
anticipated then that would also have to be taken into account as we think about it. So, we
thought it was not constructive because we ourselves don’t know precisely what would define
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
substantial improvement. But obviously, as long as the costs and other concerns do not emerge,
we’ll be looking for, you know, something that is substantial in terms of a better job market.
PETER COOK. Peter Cook with Bloomberg Television. Mr. Chairman, if I could
follow up just on your last response there. Given the fiscal cliff, is it possible that if the country,
if the policy makers were not to agree to some sort of deficit deal by the end of this year and we
were to go over the fiscal cliff, that the size of these asset purchases could indeed grow in
response to that? And more specifically, you coined the phrase “fiscal cliff,” and I wanted to get
your take on whether you still feel it’s the most appropriate language to describe what would
happen at the beginning of the year. There are some Americans who may be alarmed by the
language, some economists say it’s more of a slope. Do you still feel it’s appropriate given the
circumstances— th e contraction, the fiscal contraction, that would come if there is no deal?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, for the first part of your question if the economy
actually went off the fiscal cliff, our assessment, the CBO’s assessment, outside forecasters, all
think that that would have very significant adverse effects on the economy and on the
unemployment rate. And so, on the margin, we would try to do what we could. We would
perhaps increase a bit. But I just want to, again, be clear that we cannot offset the full impact of
the fiscal cliff. It’s just too big given the tools that we have available and the limitations on our
policy toolkit at this point. On terms of the terminology, well, and people have different
preferences about what they want to call things, I think it’s a sensible term because I think of the
fiscal policies providing support to the economy. If fiscal policy becomes very contractionary,
the economy will, I think, go off a cliff. I think that it’s reasonable to be concerned about this. I
don’t buy the idea that a short-term descent off the fiscal cliff would be not costly. I think it
would be costly and, in fact, we’re already seeing costs. Why is it that consumer confidence
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
dropped so sharply this week? Why is it that small business confidence dropped so sharply?
Why is—why are the markets volatile? Why is business investment at among its weakest levels
during the recovery? I think all of these things, at least to some extent, can be traced to the
anticipation and the concern about the fiscal cliff and I think that, you know, we don’t know
exactly what would happen but I think there is certainly a risk that it could be serious and,
therefore, I think it is very important. The most helpful thing that could—that, I think, Congress,
the Administration could do right now is find a resolution that, on the one hand, achieves
long-run fiscal sustainability, which is critical, absolutely critical for a healthy economy, but also
avoids derailing the recovery which is currently in process.
JON HILSENRATH. Jon Hilsenrath from the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Chairman, I
just— I want to try to square up some numbers. The threshold that you announced today for
when rate hikes might start is 6½ percent. The Committee’s assessment of the longer-run
unemployment rate is 6 percent, or perhaps a bit lower, and the longer-run equilibrium fed funds
rate is around 4 percent according to these projections. It suggests that when the Fed does start
raising interest rates down the road, it might have to move fairly quickly to get to some
equilibrium fed funds rate. Is that, specifically, is that the case and, more generally, can you talk
about what this framework that you set up today says about the exit strategy that you had laid out
some time ago and whether that’s evolving or changing?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, it’s a good question. So first of all, we don’t have a
precise estimate of the long-run sustainable unemployment rate. The estimates that were
provided in the Summary of Economic Projections today, as has been the case for a while, is
5.2 to 6.0 percent. So, it could be well less than 6½ percent, so that gives us some time.
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
My anticipation is that the removal of accommodation after the takeoff point, whenever
that occurs, would be relatively gradual. I don’t think we’re looking at a rapid increase. Of
course, that depends on where inflation is and other conditions. But it’s—the path that we’r e
basing these numbers on is one that assumes, first of all, as you anticipated, assumes an increase
in the funds rate first occurring some time after unemployment goes below 6½ percent, but does
not necessarily assume a rapid increase after that. And I—w hat we said in our statement is that
we would take a balanced approach. In other words, you know, once we get to that point, we
may or may not raise rates at that point. We’ll look at the situation. But assuming that inflation
remains well controlled, which I fully anticipate, I think that the rate of increase in rates would
be moderate.
This is consistent—the exit strategy that we put out is consistent with our statement today
because the exit strategy was primarily about how we would normalize the balance sheet over
time. And at this time we have not made any changes in that, and we believe that some increase
in the size of our balance sheet is consistent still with that general sequence that we laid out in
the minutes a year and a half ago. That being said, if the balance sheet grows by enough, we
may have to reconsider the pace or timing of that, but I don’t see any changes that would, you
know, radically change the time to normalization or the time to exit.
ZACHARY GOLDFARB. Thank you. Zach Goldfarb. I’m going to continue the two
question trend and ask— first on the fiscal cliff, it sounds like you would prefer a sensible
balance of fiscal consolidation and support for the recovery, but if people in Congress can’t do
that in the next two weeks, do you think postponing off this whole consolidation is preferable to
going over the cliff? And then, on the monetary policy actions today, can you give us a little bit
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more color on how you set the thresholds at what they were? And what the alternatives were,
and how you weighed various alternative but similar policies?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Sure. I’m hoping that the Congress will do the right thing
on the fiscal cliff. I— you know, there’s a problem with kicking the can down the road. It might
avoid some of the short-term impact on the recovery, but it could create concerns about our
longer-term fiscal situation and I don’t want to see that. So I think for the best—it’s in the best
interest of the economy to come to a two-part solution, if you will. Part one is to modify fiscal
policy in a way that doesn’t create enormous headwinds for the recovery in the near term. And
part two is to at least take important steps towards achieving a framework, at least, by which,
perhaps through further negotiation, the Congress and the Administration can achieve a
sustainable path for fiscal policy. That—both of these parts are very important. I don’t think
that we can consider these negotiations a success unless both of them happen.
[Speaker unknown; inaudible remark]
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. No. I think they’re equally important. On the threshold
numbers, this is based—these numbers are based on substantial analysis done by staff , both here
and at the Reserve Banks, trying to assess under so-called optimal policy, or in the best policy
that we can come up with, what would the interest rate path look like and how would it be
connected or correlated with changes in unemployment and inflation. And when we do that
analysis, what we find is that the best interest rate path—as best as we can determine it based on
our models and analysis, which is obviously imperfect—has rates remaining low until
unemployment drops below 6½ percent. And it projects if we put in the two—the half of a
percentage point above the 2 percent goal as a kind of protection against any problem with price
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
stability, but our projections, our actual forecast suggests that inflation will not go there.
Inflation will stay around 2 percent, which will be consistent with our longer-term objective.
ZACH GOLDFARB. [Inaudible Remark]
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. If we got important new information about the structure of
the economy, it’s possible, but I consider it relatively unlikely and this is one of the best—t his is
one of the advantages of this approach over the date-based approach. If information comes in
which says the economy is stronger or weaker than we expected, that would, in principle, require
a change in the date. But it doesn’t necessarily require a change in the thresholds because that
date adjustment can be made by markets just simply by looking at their own forecasts of when
unemployment will cross the line and the behavior of inflation.
SCOTT SPOERRY. Scott Spoerry from CNN, sir. When you were appearing on
60 Minutes, one of the things that happened was that you visited your old hometown, and you
talked a little bit about how the economy had affected people that you grew up with and affected
the people down there. There are a lot of just regular people like that who are out on the
countryside wondering what really happens to them if we do go over the federal cliff. Taxes go
up, spending goes down. Do they need to look for a recession? Are employers going to really
cut back on the employment, do you think? What do people out there really need to worry about
and prepare for when it comes to actually going over that fiscal cliff, if the folks in Washington
can’t get their act together?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, I come from a part of South Carolina which has been
economically challenged for quite a long time and remains so. I mean certain parts of South
Carolina have developed pretty strongly but the part where I come from— mostly agricultural, it
has a little bit of manufacturing—has a very high unemployment rate, a high foreclosure rate,
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
and people are having a hard time there. And I’ve visited there a few times since I became
So, part of the reason that, you know, we are engaging these policies is to try and create a
stronger economy—more jobs —so that folks across the country, including places like the one
where I grew up, you know, will have more opportunity to have better lives for themselves. So
that’s extremely important and I think it’s very important that we not just look at the numbers.
It’s easy to look at the unemployment rate and say, well it’s one-tenth or two-tenths. Every tenth
means, you know, many, many people are represented there. So it is very important to try to
keep in mind the reality of unemployment, of foreclosure, of weak wage growth, et cetera, so we
always try to do that. And I want to—it’s always a delicate balance— you don’t want to scare
people. And I actually believe that Congress will come up with a solution, and I certainly hope
they will.
But as many analysts, not just the Fed, have pointed out, if the fiscal cliff was allowed to
occur, and certainly if it were sustained for any period, it could have a very negative effect on
hiring, jobs, wages, economic activity, investment. And of course, the consequences of that will
be felt by everybody but certainly by those in areas like where I grew up that are relatively weak
economically, would no doubt would feel the greater brunt. So, it’s exceptionally urgent and
important that the Congress and the Administration come to a sensible agreement on this issue.
SCOTT SPOERRY. Okay, sir, I had a follow-up, too. I’m not going to ask you whether
we’re in a bond bubble. But obviously, the new guidance that you’ve given in the FOMC
statement is going to give a lot more clues to people who own bonds about when they might start
lightening up their bond portfolios and changing the composition of what they own. Was
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concerns about information about bond prices and things happening in a big hurry, in terms of
some sort of a bubble popping—was that a consideration in adding this transparency?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. I wouldn’t say it was an important motivation for adding
transparency. I think transparency has a lot of value. But it is the—it is a f act that this greater
clarity will help markets better predict how bond yields will behave. As we go forward in time,
if the economy continues to strengthen as we hope, as the exit comes closer for the Federal
Reserve, then you would expect longer-term bond yields to begin to rise. And the more
information we can provide to markets about the conditionality under which the Fed would
consider removing accommodation, the better information they’ll have about the likely path of
bonds and that will allow for a smoother adjustment. So I think that’s a positive aspect of this
communication. It— I wouldn’t say it was the major reason. The major reason is to give the
markets and the public more transparency about what’s determining our policy, but that is one
potential advantage.
ROBIN HARDING. Robin Harding from the Financial Times. Mr. Chairman, you said
a moment ago that these thresholds are based on an analysis of optimal policy. In the optimal
policy path that Vice Chair Yellen laid out in her speech a few weeks ago, it showed the first rise
in interest rates occurring in early 2016 and then rates rising very slowly after that. Is that the
policy that the Fed is now following? And secondly, if I may, you referred to a number of
inflation forecasts in your introductory remarks. In that case, how will we ever know that the
inflation threshold has been hit? Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. So, the kind of optimal policy path that Vice Chairman
Yellen showed is indicative of the kinds of analysis we’ve done. I mean, we’ve run it for a
variety of different scenarios, different assumptions about models, and so on, but the general
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
character of that interest rate path, i.e., that it stays low until unemployment is in the vicinity of
6½ or a little lower, and then rises relatively slowly, which goes back to the question that was
asked earlier, that it doesn’t involve a rapid removal of accommodation after that point is
reached. That is consistent with that kind of analysis, and that’s the type of analysis that was not
the only thing we looked at but was informative in our discussion. You’ll note also in that kind
of policy path, of the type that she discussed, that inflation stays essentially at 2 or very close to
In terms of inflation forecast, the—what the C ommittee will do on a regular basis is
include in its statement its views of where inflation is likely to be a year from now. For example,
currently, we already say that, you know, we expect inflation to run at or below the Committee’s
objective in a longer term. The intellectual exercise we’ll be doing is asking ourselves if we
maintain low rates along the lines suggested by this policy, would we expect inflation to cross
the threshold or reach that level?
Now, it’s very important that the public, the media, the markets find our projections
credible, obviously. And so for that reason, you know, we will be referring extensively to
publicly available information such as various measures of inflation— I mentioned some in my
opening remarks—outside forecasts , the breakevens from inflation protected bonds, et cetera.
So, if our outlook deviates in any sense in a significant way from sort of what all these things are
saying, at a minimum, it will be incumbent on me and the rest of us to explain that. But my
expectation is that our projections will be broadly consistent with public views, public
information, and so I think we can manage the credibility issue. But again, just to be clear, the
projection that matters for our determination is the one that the Committee collectively comes up
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
BINYAMIN APPLEBAUM. Sir, you’ve articulated more clearly than ever your
commitment to reduce unemployment, but you’ve also said that you’re not actually doing
anything more to achieve that goal—that you still expect it to be three years away, that you’re
disappointed with the pace of progress, and that inflation is not the limiting factor. What is the
limiting factor? Why is the Fed not announcing today additional measures to reduce
unemployment? What would it take for you to get that?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, we took—the question was whether this was
something new relative to September, I think September was the date where we did do a
substantial increase in accommodation. At that point, we announced our dissatisfaction with the
state of the labor market and the outlook for jobs and said we would take further action if the
outlook didn’t improve. And what we’ve done today is really just following through what we
said. So, I would say that, you know, looking at it from the perspective of September, that we
have, in fact, taken significant additional action to provide support for the recovery and for job
creation. The reason—one of the considerations though, as I’ve talked about, is that, you know,
given that we are now in the world of unconventional policy that has both uncertain costs and
uncertain efficacy or uncertain benefits, you know, that creates a more—somewhat more
complicated policy decision than the old style of just changing the federal funds rate. You know,
there are concerns that I’ve talked about in these briefings before that if the balance sheet gets
indefinitely large that there would be potential risks in terms of financial stability, in terms of
market functioning. And the Committee takes these risks very seriously. And they impose a
certain cost on policy that doesn’t exist when you’re dealing only with the federal funds rate.
And so what we’re trying to do here is balance the potential benefits, in terms of lower
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
unemployment and inflation at target, against the reality that as the balance sheet gets bigger that
there’s greater costs that might be associated with that, and those have to be taken to account.
BINYAMIN APPLEBAUM. Sir, if I can just follow, so these forecasts presumably
incorporate the actions taken into account, and so given those actions, it will still be three years
until you achieve your goals. Is the message to people who are unemployed basically, “We are
doing all we can?” Is this the conclusion that, given that balance of factors, this is the most we
can expect?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, first of all, again, these—the projections that you’re
looking at are based on each individual—this is not a Committee collective projection. What
they are, of course, is 19 separate participants making their own projections based on their own
views of optimal policy. So, for example, it includes those folks who think that we shouldn’t be
doing any more purchases and their forecasts are included in there as well. So, it’s not exactly an
apples to apples comparison, but it is true that if we could wave a magic wand and get
unemployment down to 5 percent tomorrow, obviously we would do that, but there are
constraints in terms of the dynamics of the economy, in terms of the power of these tools, and in
terms of the fact that we do need to take into account, you know, the possibility of other costs
and risks that might be associated with a large expansion of our balance sheet.
DARREN GERSH. To just—Darren Gersh, Nightly Business Report. So just following
up on that last question, how helpful would it be to see, as part of the fiscal cliff resolution, some
near-term stimulus? The President’s proposed that. Do you think—how helpful do you think
that would be and, I’ll ask my follow up now, whatever happened to your southern accent?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, on the second one, I’d like to think I’m bilingual.
When I go home sometimes I—it comes out pretty strongly, but I won’ t try to do that here. So, I
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
try to be careful, as you know, not to give views on specific tax and spending programs. I think,
of course, obviously those are the province of the Administration and Congress. The attitude
I’ve taken has been that, at a minimum, Congress should try to do no harm, that they should try
to avoid policies that significantly slow or derail the recovery at this point. So I think that’s the
critical thing along with the long-term objective of achieving a sustainable fiscal path. Now,
given that basic recommendation, you know, Congress can consider variations. For example, if
they believe that they can achieve a strong, credible future path for fiscal policy, that would give
them potentially some space to do something a little bit more expansionary in the short term.
But, those are judgments I think that Congress has to make about whether they can
simultaneously continue supportive fiscal policy in the short term while maintaining the
credibility that, in fact, they will be addressing our structural deficit problems in the longer term.
And that is I think really a question for them and for their staff.
KRISTINA PETERSON. Kristina Peterson of Dow Jones. Looking over the past year or
several years, how would you evaluate the Fed’s accuracy making economic forecasts, and how
does that affect the ability to make monetary policy decisions, especially as it’s connected to the
thresholds?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, I think it’s fair to say that we have overestimated the
pace of growth, total output growth, GDP growth, from the beginning of the recovery and we
have had therefore—had to continue to scale down our estimates of output growth. But
interestingly, at the same time, we have been more accurate, not perfectly accurate by any
means, but we’ve been somewhat more accurate in forecasting unemployment. And how do you
reconcile those two things? I talked about this in remarks I gave at the New York Economic
Club recently, right before Thanksgiving. And I think the reconciliation is that what we’re
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
learning is that, at least temporarily, the financial crisis may have reduced somewhat the
underlying potential growth rate of the U.S. economy. It has interfered with business creation,
with investment, with technological advances, and so on. And that can account for at least part
of the somewhat slower growth. At the same time, though, what—of course, what monetary
policy influences is not potential growth, not the underlying structural growth. That’s for—
many other different kinds of policies affect that. What monetary policy affects, primarily, is the
state of the business cycle, the amount of excess unemployment or the extent of recession in the
economy. And there, I think we’ve also perhaps underestimated a bit the recession, but we’ve
been much closer there. And I think therefore that we’ve been able to address that somewhat
more effectively with quite accommodative policies. That being said, of course, we have over
time, as we have seen disappointment in growth and job creation, we have obviously, as we did
in September, have added accommodation and we’ve continued— we continue to reassess the
outlook. I think it’s only fair to say that economic forecasting beyond a few quarters is very,
very difficult. And what we basically are trying to do is create a plausible scenario which we
think is reasonably likely—base policy on that, but we prepared to adjust as new information
comes in and as the outlook changes, and inevitably it will.
GREG IP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Greg Ip of the Economist. Economists have long
believed that central banks cannot affect the unemployment rate in the long run. That’s one
reason you’ve seen a move towards central banks being given mandates for low inflation only.
Can you explain if the Fed, by tying its monetary policy so explicitly to an unemployment
threshold, whether that is consistent or inconsistent with that longstanding view? And, if it’s
consistent, how is this superior to simply having a threshold for inflation only? And would the
approach that you’re now taking be possible if the Fed had only a mandate for low inflation?
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, it’s entirely consistent with your view, with the point
that you made. So let me just reiterate it. As we stated, in fact, in our January set of principles,
the central bank cannot control unemployment in the long run. I’d add a caveat to this. There’s
a little bit of a caveat here, which is that very extended periods of unemployment can interfere
with the workings of the labor market. And so, if the Fed were not to address a large
unemployment problem for a long time, it might, in fact, have some influence on the long-term
unemployment rate. But as a general rule, as a general rule, and I think this is the right baseline,
the long-term unemployment rate is determined by a range of structural features of the economy
and a range of economic policies and not by monetary policy. So that being said, what our 6½
percent threshold is is—as I said in my opening remarks, it is not a target — what it is is a
guidepost in terms of when the beginning of the reduction of accommodation could begin. It
could be later than that, but at least by that time, no earlier than that time. So it’s really more like
a reaction function or a Taylor rule, if you will. I don’t want— I’m— I’ll get— I’m ready to get
the phone call from John Taylor. It is not a Taylor rule but it has the same feature that it relates
policy to observables in the economy, such as unemployment and inflation. So, what it’s
basically doing is saying how our policy will evolve over time as the economy evolves. It has no
implication that we can affect the long-run unemployment rate, which we believe is lower than
6½ percent. We think it’s somewhere between 5 and 6 according to our SEP projections. We
are a dual mandate central bank and I think that providing information on both sides is more
helpful. So, I understand your point but I think that it’s—that providing information on
unemployment and inflation gives more information to the markets, to the public that allows
them to infer how our policy is likely to evolve.
[Speaker unknown; inaudible remark]
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Unless—so long as the inflation condition is met. It’s
WYATT ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, Wyatt Andrews, CBS News. I’d like—still like to
hear a little bit more about why you made this announcement today specifically tying federal
funds and your policy to the 6.5 percent number? I’m sure you have some sort of theory about
what you hope changes in the economy as a result of this announcement. If so, what is it?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, we think it’s a better form of communication. We
think it’s—by using the thresholds which ties rates to economic conditions, we’re more
transparent about what’s going to determine our policy in the future. The date-based guidance, it
served a purpose. But it had the problem that whenever economic outlook changed, the
Committee was faced with the question of whether we should change the date-based guidance,
and we did change it a couple of times. But that was a nontransparent process. Nobody
understood exactly why we made a particular change because we were not providing any kind of
fundamental information about how our policy is linked to the underlying outlook. And so, we, I
believe, certainly, that this approach is superior. I’m not saying it’s the best possible approach,
there may be other things we can do in the future. We’re always looking to find ways to improve
our communication but I do think it’s more transparent and will allow the markets to respond
quickly and promptly to changes in the outlook by adjusting when they think rate increases will
begin, and therefore, it’ll act, to some extent, like an automatic stabilizer. So if the outlook
worsens and that leads markets to think that the increase in rates is further out in the future, that
will tend to lower longer-term rates and that would tend to be supportive of the economy. So
that has an automatic stabilizer type effect. It kind of offsets adverse shocks. So it’s a better
form of communication. As I said, we discussed it quite extensively at the last meeting. And
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
so—and frankly, given that it’s a relatively complex change, it seemed like it would be a good
idea to do it at a meeting where there was a press conference. So, we decided since we’re ready
to go why not make the change earlier and get the benefit earlier.
WYATT ANDREWS. As a quick follow-up, are you—did you see a level of uncertainty
in the business community that you hope to solve by this announcement?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, at the moment, I think that the expectations of the
business community and of the Federal Open Market Committee happen to be pretty well
aligned. If you look at the financial market indicators, the future federal funds rate path, it’s
pretty consistent with the mid-2015 date-based guidance that we had been providing. So I’m not
saying there was a major inconsistency between what the business community was expecting, the
markets were expecting, and what we were expecting. So that wasn’t really the issue. The
problem is that, looking forward, that what happens if there is a significant change either for the
better, or for the worse, in the outlook? Under the date-based guidance, that would require the
Committee to determine, you know, what the new date is and to make that change in a
nontransparent way. But under this threshold-based guidance, the markets and the business
community can make that calculation on their own and adjust that—their estimates of when rates
will begin to increase based only on their own forecast and not have to wait for the Federal Open
Market Committee to give them a date. So we just think it’s a better approach.
JOSH ZUMBRUN. Mr. Chairman, Josh Zumbrun, Bloomberg News. By mid-2015, the
recovery is going to be nearly six years old. The average postwar recovery has been a little less
than five. We’re already banking on a very long expansion. You expect, by mid-2015, the funds
rate is going to be at zero percent, your balance sheet is potentially at $4 trillion. If the business
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
cycle runs out of steam and you’re still at zero percent interest rates, does the Fed no longer have
a forceful response in that situation?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, the Fed will always, you know, keep— we’ve
innovated quite a bit in the last few years and it’s always possible we could find new ways to
provide support for the economy. But it’s certainly true, I’ve— you know, there’s no doubt that
with interest rates near zero and with the balance sheet already large, that the ability to provide
additional accommodation is not unlimited and that that’s just a reality and that actually is an
argument, I think, for being a little bit more aggressive now. I mean, it’s a really good objective
to get the economy moving, to get some momentum that protects the economy against
unanticipated shocks that might occur, and gets us off the zero bound earlier. So, exactly for
those reasons, the kind of risks that arise when the—when policy interest rates are close to zero,
and the greater difficulty in providing additional policy support, I think that’s an argument for
being somewhat more proactive now, when we still have the ability to do that, and to try to get
the economy, you know, back to a healthy condition.
DONNA BORAK. Hi, Chairman.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Hi.
DONNA BORAK. Donna Borak with American Banker. My question pertains to the
Volcker Rule. Regulators, earlier this year, seemed cautiously optimistic that they’d be able to
finalize a rule by the end of the year. However, that seems a bit unlikely at this point. And now,
as you know, lawmakers are calling for a two-year implementation delay on the rule. Given the
fact that it’s been such a lengthy process, can you tell us where things stand at this point? How
much closer are we to a final rule? Have the agencies been able to work out their differences?
And, if you may, a prediction on when we might actually see a rule.
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. We’ve made quite a bit of progress. It’s a difficult,
complex rule, as you know, and we’ve had, I think I recall, 18,000 comments or something like
that. So it’s been a lot to look at. There are a lot of concerns that arose even from, you know,
foreign commenters about the effects on their bond markets, et cetera. So there’s been a lot of
work to do. There, I think there is quite a bit of agreement, I wouldn’t say a final agreement, but
quite a bit of agreement on key points among the regulators, at this juncture. And, of course, if
Congress gives us some other instruction, we’ll follow that, but so far, we haven’t received any
different instruction. So it’s our intent to try to get this done early in 2013.
PETER BARNES. Peter Barnes, Fox Business, Mr. Chairman. Since your last press
conference with us, we’ve had an election. One of the candidates in that election, Governor
Romney, said that he would not reappoint you to a third term as Chairman. President Obama did
not weigh in on the issue but he was—he did win reelection. If the President were to call you
and say, “Ben, your country needs your continued stewardship at the Federal Reserve. We need
you to stay and finish the job, see this through.” Would you consider it? Would you do it, and,
by chance, have you had any conversations to that effect with the President or anybody on his
team? Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. So to answer the last part, no, I haven’t had any
conversations. I think the President has got quite a few issues he needs to be thinking about,
from fiscal cliff to many other appointments and so on. From my own perspective, I just, I really
don’t have anything to add from the last press conference. I am very much engaged in these
difficult issues that we’re discussing today, and I have not been spending time thinking about my
own future. So I don’t really have anything to add there.
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
KEVIN HALL. Okay, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. The two questions, taking the
Goldfarb rule into effect, one having to do with the CPI, there’s a lot of debate now with the
Boehner plan about this chained CPI. As an econ—not as a Fed Chairman but as an
economist—is there a log ic in going to that? Do you think it’s a move that should be done
separate from the politics of it? And again, with your economist hat, the labor market, you
talked about the importance, not looking at the 6.5 percent threshold, but the broader conditions.
A big debate—Steve Liesman’s nemesis talks a lot about people being beamed to Mars. In your
mind, what is happening in the job market? Are we creating jobs? Is that why it’s coming down
or is it because people—the degree of discouraged workers? Wha t is your sense of how quickly
it’s fallen because of new employment?
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. So, on the first question, the chained CPI versus the
fixed-weight CPI is a technical issue. The chained CPI is technically better, according to most
economists, because it allows for changes in the mix of goods and services that people actually
consume more effectively. However, whether, you know, whether that’s more appropriate for,
say, Social Security indexing or not, I think that’s ultimately a political decision. I suppose a
rejoinder would be that neither the CPI nor the chained CPI may necessarily be a particularly
good measure of the cost of living for Social Security recipients. So, those are the kinds of
questions that Congress is going to have to deal with. Second part of your question was?
KEVIN HALL. The debate over the extent to which the unemployment rate is falling
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Ah, yes. Sorry.
KEVIN HALL. New jobs versus people leaving.
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Yes. Well, you know, you can see the comparison by
looking, for example, at the household survey, which gives estimates of how many people are
added to the labor force, how many are added to the employed, how many people are leaving the
labor force, and it’s true that part of the decline in unemployment—and indeed all of it in the last
reading, but over the recovery, part of the decline in unemployment has come from declines in
participation rates, that is, people leaving the labor force. Some of that decline in participation
appears to be due to longer-run factors, aging and changing patterns of work among women. So
those things were probably not directly related to the recession, for example. But beyond that
downward trend, there’s been some additional decline in labor force participation, and in the
ratio of employment to population, which presumably is linked to discouragement about the state
of the labor force. So that certainly is part of the issue. That being said, obviously there has
been a good bit of job creation. You can see that either in the household survey or in the payroll
establishment survey. So I think there’s no doubt that the labor market is considerably better
today than it was two years ago, there’s not any question about that. But it’s also the case that
many indicators of the labor market remain quite weak, ranging from the number of long-term
unemployed to the number of people who have part-time work who would like full-time work.
Wage growth obviously is very weak, and I could go on. So, it may be that the labor market is
even a bit weaker than the current unemployment rate suggests, but I think that it is nevertheless
the case that there has been improvement since the trough a couple of years ago.
CATHERINE HOLLANDER. Mr. Chairman, Catherine Hollander from National
Journal. How concerned are you that markets will have to tank in order to get lawmakers to
reach a deal on the fiscal cliff, and what do you make of their recent complacency? Is there a
Wall Street–Washington disconnect?
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Interesting question. Well, I certainly hope that markets
won’t have to tank. I don’t—we want to have confidence, not just in markets but in businesses
and households as well, and the best way the fiscal policymakers can achieve that is by coming
to a solution as quickly as possible. Markets have obviously already responded to some extent,
up and down; you can see from day to day how they respond to news about the negotiations. But
on the other hand, it’s also true, if you look at the experience, I think the very informative
experience of the debt limit debate in August of 2011, that both confidence and markets remain
pretty sanguine up to pretty close to the point where it looked like there was actually a chance the
debt limit would not be raised. And then, of course, there was a pretty sharp shock, particularly
to confidence, about the time of the, you know, of the final debates. So it’s not unusual to see
markets being complacent. Of course, there’s from a market point of view, there are sort of risks
in both directions. Obviously, things go badly, but perhaps if things go especially well, that
would be good news, and maybe right now markets are sort of taking an average of those two
possibilities. But again, just to reiterate, I don’t think any policymaker, including the Fed, should
be responding to markets. What we should be doing is making policy, you know, based on the
fundamentals and doing what’s best for the economy and I hope that fiscal policymakers will
follow that injunction as well.
STEVE BECKNER. Mr. Chairman, Steve Beckner of Market News International. With
the federal government borrowing roughly $1 trillion a year and now with the Fed on pace to buy
roughly a trillion dollars a year in bonds, are you concerned about a public, and possibly global,
perception that the Fed is accommodating not just growth but accommodating federal borrowing
needs, and are you concerned about what this might do to the Fed’s credibility, and the
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
credibility of U.S. finances in general, and the credibility of the dollar as the world’s leading
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Well, first of all, just a couple of facts. The—we’re buying
Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, about half and half, roughly. So we’re buying
considerably less than the Treasury is issuing and, moreover, the share of outstanding Treasuries
that the Federal Reserve owns is not all that different from what it was before the crisis, because
while our holdings have increased, so has the—obviously the stock of Treasuries in public hands.
So it’s not quite evident that there has been such a radical shift there. You know, we’ve been
increasing our balance sheet now for some time, and we’ve been very clear that this is a
temporary measure. It’s a way to provide additional accommodation to an economy which needs
support. We’ve been equally clear that we will normalize the balance sheet, that we will reduce
the size of our holdings and—whether by letting them run off or by selling assets in the future.
So this is, again, only a temporary step. It would be quite a different matter if we were buying
these assets and holding them indefinitely. That would be monetization. We’re not doing that.
We are very clear about our intentions. And I think up until now, it seems our credibility has
been quite good. There is not any sign either of current inflation or of any—there’s no strong
evidence that there are any increases in inflation expectations for that matter, looking at financial
markets, looking at surveys, looking at economic forecasts, and so on. So, this is one of the
things that we have to look at. Remember, I talked earlier about the potential costs of a large
balance sheet. We want to be sure that there’s no misunderstanding, that there’s no effect on
inflation expectations from the size of our balance sheet. That’s one of the things we have to
look at, but as to this point, there just really is no evidence that people are taking it that way.
And I guess it’s worth pointing out—of course we’ve been very focused on the United States
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
here, but we’re not the only central bank that has increased the size of its balance sheet. The
Japanese, the Europeans, the British have all done the same, and very much more or less to the
same extent in terms of the fraction of GDP, and I think the sophisticated market players and the
public understand that this is part of a collective need, a need to provide additional
accommodation to weak economies and not an accommodation of fiscal policy.
GREG ROBB. Last but not least, Greg Robb, MarketWatch. There seems to be growing
evidence that some of the MBS purchases, the impact of the MBS purchases, are that banks are
holding on to some of the gains and not passing them on to the borrowers. Is there anything you
can do about that and are you concerned about that? Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. So the question is—just to restate your question —is about
the spread between the mortgage rates that the public pays and the yields to mortgage-backed
securities that banks may hold, and the question is, is that spread widening so that the full benefit
of the reduction in MBS yields is not being passed through, that’s the question. Well, I have to
make sure everybody heard it, so you could answer. Our analysis suggests that it takes time—
two points. The first point is that while we don’t expect a hundred percent pass-through of MBS
yields to mortgage rates, our empirical and theoretical analysis—and we’ve had quite a bit of
work done on this issue—suggests that over time, the great majority of the decline in MBS yields
does get passed through to mortgage rates. So we do anticipate, over time, that the full benefit
will, or most of the benefit will, be seen by retail customers. And indeed, we have seen already a
pretty significant decline since September in retail mortgage rates. But one thing that’s perhaps
confusing this issue a little bit is that there are other things happening in the economy which are
affecting those spreads. So, for example, there are capacity limitations, which are allowing
banks to, you know, to charge higher yields, there’s extra costs like concerns about putback risk,
December 12, 2012 Chairman Bernanke’s Press Conference FINAL
for example. There’s higher g-fees. So there’s a number of things happening in the economy
which will tend, all else equal, to raise that spread between mortgage rates and MBS yields, so
that’s unfortunate. What we can try to do there, of course, is to try to encourage good policy, for
example, on putbacks, that will reduce the perceived risk and cost to the banks of making
mortgage loans. But again, you know, I think most of those things, like g-fees, for example, are
not really in our control, but, again, taking all those issues as constant, it does seem to be the case
that, over a period of time, not immediately, but over a period of time, most of the declines in
MBS yields do find their way through to mortgage customers and thereby strengthen the housing