Prior discussion:
speaker: MR. KOHN.
text: Once we finish the discussion, the subcommittee will compile the results, try to ascertain where we are and what the center of gravity would be, and consider what the next steps might be, depending on what people say. On the trial run, I don't anticipate an extended discussion. If people have major issues and questions to raise, they should raise them. But much of the idea of the trial run is to uncover major issues and questions, so I hope that the discussion can be relatively short. That's all I have to say by way of introduction, Mr. Chairman. 

CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. "I did not go to negotiate, I went to inform, and therefore I don't have any commitments to bring to you."

Full utterance: Thank you. I'd like to make a couple of prefatory remarks. Some of the issues here are political in nature, so I'd like you to know that I have consulted a bit with the Congress. I did not go to negotiate, I went to inform, and therefore I don't have any commitments to bring to you. But I was generally pretty encouraged by my discussions. I had the sense that--and this is a very important caveat--so long as our commitment to the dual mandate remains strong both in word and in deed, we will get a fair hearing if we decide to go forward. I also have a very strong impression that the risk of going into directions that we don't want in terms of opening up the Federal Reserve Act and so on is quite low and can be managed. So we should think about this today on its merits. If we decide to go forward, we'll have to develop a strategy; but I don't think that there are immediate barriers from the political side to prevent us from considering this. That being said, I just want to say also that we have not decided that we are going to agree on an objective. There are various possibilities. We could agree on an objective. We could agree to agree but to do it in a staged and gradual way. Or we could simply not agree on an objective. Even so, I think that the discussion today would be quite helpful for our internal discussions because I'm not the only one who feels that a certain amount of disagreement exists around the table that may be associated with views on what inflation should be and how we should measure it. Again, we have not made any decisions, and I hope today will give us some more insight about how much consensus we have. Just a word on the projections: As was noted, I think that a minutes-style process could be a useful way to make sure that everybody has seen the document. But I want just to make clear that, if we do these projections, twice a year the projections, the commentary, and so forth will have to appear in the Monetary Policy Report to the President, which is about two weeks after the meeting. Therefore, we will have to work toward ensuring that we can do this in about a two-week period, or a little less than the usual period for the minutes. I just want to make that clear. Finally, I think we're in pretty good shape on time, but we're responding to several requests. We are going to try very, very hard to be finished by 3:00 p.m., so I hope everyone will keep that in mind as we go through the discussion. The discussion is open for comments on the questions that the Committee raised. President Poole.

Opinion: yes
About monetary policy: no