FOMC In English
http://market-ticker.org/archives/2009/11/04.html
Tickerguy's English translation of the FOMC statement:
Release Date: November 4, 2009
For immediate release
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up.
We successfully talked some people into rebuilding inventory and spending money they don't have. Suckers.
Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period.
We don't count the 29.9% interest rates that Citibank decided to charge its credit-card holders in this computation; but if we did that would be considered a good thing, since raping the consumer is positive for banks. Oh, and we're a bank.
Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months.
Four year olds and cats are cashing the $8,000 homebuyer credit, as the IRS has recently disclosed. This of course supports housing.
Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit.
A huge number of people are out of work, those who have jobs are having their wages and hours cut, your house is still going down in price and Citibank just raised your credit card interest rate to 29.9%. This is all bullish for the economy, of course.
Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales.
We suckered a few of you, but most businesspeople have IQs larger than their shoe size, and refuse to play our game any more. As a consequence our attempt to hose them isn't working out so well.
Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.
Fraud always works for a while. We can buy trash MBS, for example, and by doing so make things look better than they are. We can also ignore the real capital position of the banks that are under our jurisdiction, including those really big ones that shorted Gold in the futures market at $1,000 and now are way underwater. Never mind that little man behind the curtain, I AM THE GREAT AND WONDERFUL OZ!
With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.
The only place pricing power exists is in commodities. Everywhere else prices are collapsing. That's not supposed to happen, but we'll figure that one out later.
In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will continue to employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.
When something doesn't work, do more of it! That's the ticket! Pay no attention to that asshole Einstein - he's dead, and besides, I'm smarter than he ever was.
To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt. The amount of agency debt purchases, while somewhat less than the previously announced maximum of $200 billion, is consistent with the recent path of purchases and reflects the limited availability of agency debt.
We bought it all. We're no longer part of the market, we are the market! We have no freaking clue how to exit from this, and we know that when we do rates will spike higher. Unfortunately we also know that if Fannie and Freddie continue to bleed red ink we will blow up instead of them by doing this, so in March we pinky-promise to stop, even though that will destroy what's left of the housing market.
In order to promote a smooth transition in markets, the Committee will gradually slow the pace of its purchases of both agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities and anticipates that these transactions will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010.
There isn't any more to buy, didn't you hear us up above? Fools.
The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs as warranted.
Its all trash but heh, it's marked to model! I pinky swear it's all worth PAR. Seriously.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Donald L. Kohn; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P. Lockhart; Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L. Yellen.
We're all in this together, now let's hold hands and......
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