Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have the sense that since our last meeting we’ve received a wealth of data but not necessarily a wealth of information. Between the data that have come in and the conversations that I’ve had with my District contacts in the past six weeks ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, for us to counteract the powerful forces that are weakening our economy and financial markets, we should provide maximum monetary policy stimulus as quickly as possible, and conducting monetary policy on the basis of a fed funds rate target is no longer the best strategy ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reports from my contacts have been very weak for several weeks now. Sadly, I feel as though the data have been catching up with the anecdotal comments that I have been receiving for a while. I have been hearing a lot of comments along the ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to start by thanking the staff for the excellent background materials they provided. While I certainly wish we were not in this circumstance, I do think that this is a critical conversation for us to be having at this meeting, and the background ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I strongly favor alternative A, a 50 basis point cut in our fed funds target rate today. I think it is important for us to move aggressively and quickly to offset the strong forces that are acting to depress economic activity. I know that some prefer ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I concur with the view that we face a very serious situation. In most respects I agree with the Greenbook baseline projection, with the reasoning that the Board staff used to arrive at the projection, and with their view that the risks to growth are to ...

I’m also in favor of the program, and I agree with Vice Chairman Geithner’s comments that this announcement along with the IMF program should be sufficient. But if there are other requests, I think it is important to bring them back to the Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also support your recommendation to reduce our target fed funds rate by 50 basis points. Clearly, as has been noted, economic activity has weakened substantially since our last meeting, and inflation concerns have lessened. For all the reasons you articulated, especially the opportunity to participate ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The recent financial market news is shaking people’s confidence dramatically. But even before recent events, the evidence was already pointing to more effects of the financial crisis on the real economy than I had built into my projection at our last meeting. The reports from ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I indicated in the earlier go-round, I found the balance of risks to economic growth and inflation to be essentially the same. So other things being equal, I might prefer to have risk assessment language that is even more balanced than the risk assessment language ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My outlook for economic growth and inflation over the next few years is broadly similar to the one that I held last meeting, although I think that the prospects for both inflation and economic growth in the near term have deteriorated since June. To a close ...

My preference is to have the two options, the 28-day and the 84-day. As I expressed earlier, I am concerned that, even with improving the collateral and surveillance aspects, the 84-day still presents some challenges. So if it is operationally feasible, I would prefer having the two options of 28 ...

Thank you. During the presentation, it was mentioned that many banks were asking for this longer-term TAF. I am not getting that request here in my District, but I wonder whether any thought was given to keeping the 28-day TAF and then adding the longer 84-day TAF. Is that even ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also support extending our lending facilities to get through the year-end funding problems. As many others have already said, I agree that we should undertake an evaluation of the changes to our emergency liquidity facilities. I think it is important that we do it more ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support keeping the fed funds rate target at its current level and the language in alternative B. I see some hopeful signs that stress in financial markets has diminished as has the threat of a sharp recession. Despite these recent signs, I expect that the ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The last two months have brought an interesting shift in my conversations with my business contacts. Their concerns have shifted from problems in financial markets to the rapid increase in input prices. Energy prices are the focus nationwide, but steel prices are also capturing the attention ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me also start by commending the authors of the papers that were prepared on this topic. I found the material very informative and helpful. I agree with the objectives established by the staff to evaluate the set of proposals, and I also support the process ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My concerns about the real economy are similar to those that I had in March. I continue to believe that residential real estate markets could deteriorate even further than what I have in my baseline projection and could exert even greater downward pressure on business activity ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Regardless to whom I talk with these days, the conversation quickly turns to both the fragile condition of financial markets and the spectacular rise in energy and commodity prices. I had hoped that one of these problems would have gone away by now, but clearly that ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support your recommendation. As I said earlier, I do see the risks to the Greenbook baseline as being skewed to the downside because of the absence of any signs of a bottoming out in the housing market. As others have mentioned, I am concerned about ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Through my conversations with people in the Fourth District financial community, I get the clear impression that some credit channels are closing down. Given the uncertainties in financial markets, some of the large banks in my District are finding it challenging to ascertain potential loss exposures ...

Yes. I just wanted to clarify that we are being asked to authorize the acceptance of different collateral. Who determines the size of the lending program on an ongoing basis? Is that determined by the Desk?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like the Greenbook, my projection for the real economy incorporates a sharp decline in the equilibrium real fed funds rate. Given the large risks facing the real economy, I think we need to take precautions against having a restrictive fed funds rate target. I think a ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my view, economic conditions have deteriorated significantly since our December meeting. Taken as a whole, the stories that have been relayed to me by my Fourth District business contacts have been downbeat, and several of the contacts are concerned that we may be slipping into ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support your proposal for a 75 basis point reduction in the fed funds rate today. At the time of our last call, I was hesitant about moving because it was in advance of some important data. Obviously, we got those data, and they were very ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, am troubled by the weakness in the real economy data that we are seeing. Our Beige Book contacts confirm the weakness, and my business contacts to whom I have been talking report more weakness than they did before our December meeting. However, they are ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I favor a 25 basis point cut in our fed funds rate target and the language in alternative B. More losses at financial companies, in combination with uncertain year-end funding pressures, obviously have unsettled financial markets again. As I said earlier, sentiment about business conditions next ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The conversations that I have had with my business contacts indicate that business conditions in our region have clearly softened since the last meeting and perhaps even more than what is reflected in the Beige Book report that we prepared just a few weeks ago. A ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, first of all, want to start off with commending the staff for addressing many of the issues that were raised the last time we talked about this proposal. However, I still have two remaining concerns regarding adopting this facility at this time. The first concern ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, like several of my colleagues who have gone ahead of me, find myself torn between alternatives A and B. I also wrestled with many of the issues that President Plosser articulated so well. I left our September meeting thinking that the 50 basis point cut ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like many others around the table, my report to this Committee in September indicated a sharp deterioration in business confidence. My business contacts were concerned about what may happen. During the intermeeting period I heard less about what may happen and more about what is actually ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My inclination after reading the memo over the weekend was to be supportive of the proposal. However, given some of the comments that I’ve heard from my colleagues today, I welcome the additional time to think about some of the concerns, especially some of the ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given the shift that I am projecting in economic outlook, I think that a more decisive action is called for today, and I support a 50 basis point cut in the fed funds target rate. In the past few meetings I was in favor of setting ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reports that I am hearing from my business contacts reflect a sudden and a significant deterioration in their evaluation of the business climate. The data in hand, except for the troubling August employment report, have not been especially dire, and neither are the impressions I ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I said earlier, I do think that the risks to the outlook for economic growth have increased while the risks to the outlook for inflation have moderated but are still to the upside. So I found the suggestion on page 25 of the Bluebook that ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reports that I am hearing from business leaders in the Fourth District lead me to conclude that the pace of economic activity hasn’t changed a great deal since our last meeting. However, the uncertainties surrounding the business climate seem to have risen measurably. The ...

Thank you. I’m basically happy with the statement the way it is now. Like President Stern, I was leaning on the side of making it shorter, but when I started to look at where I would cut, it was very hard to come up with places to cut. I ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, like President Moskow, find it very difficult to find any disagreement with what you propose. I’m very supportive of the approach you’ve laid out for the reasons that you articulated so clearly. I support extending the forecast period. You mentioned going to a ...

Yes, I have a question on the timing of the Chairman’s testimony. Are those dates set by law?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also support the policy action in alternative B. I have some of the same concerns that President Lacker and President Plosser, and also President Yellen in her letter, raised about the increasing difficulty in characterizing inflation without having a clear sense of the Committee’s ...

I also extend my heartfelt congratulations to the Spurs on their fourth and final NBA championship. [Laughter] Now, turning to inflation, I am hearing reports of upward price pressures across a handful of industrial commodities, and notably for metals. But wage pressures remain modest. Nevertheless, for the first time in ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. News from the Fourth District is little changed from my last report. The District economy continues to be weighed down by weakness in the housing market, and there is general consensus among my contacts that the housing sector has not yet seen bottom. To date, adverse ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support the recommendation embodied by alternative B. The Committee last time wanted to introduce a little more flexibility into the statement while not sending a message that our resolve about achieving price stability had changed. It took a while for that message to get through ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The economy from the perspective of the Fourth District isn’t materially different from the way I heard Dave describe national conditions. Manufacturers in the District generally report modest but steady growth. In particular, metals producers and their suppliers report strong orders and production. My business ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to thank the staff for the memos that were sent out before the meeting. They were very helpful in preparing for this meeting.

I am in favor of defining our price stability objective numerically. As others have noted, being more explicit about our ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also favor leaving our policy rate unchanged today, and I support the language in alternative B, although I find myself sympathetic to the assessment of risk language in alternative A. The incoming information we have received since our last meeting has led me to believe ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Comments from my business contacts confirm the softening in economic activity that is depicted in the Greenbook. Most of the people I talked with during this intermeeting period confirmed the slowing that we are seeing in the national data. But at the same time, they expect ...

He mentioned that a number of 3 percent was attached to first payments in default and that number is just way out of whack.

Actually, Michael, the CEO of a large bank that originates mortgages, with whom I had a conversation, commented that this indicator is a bit confusing because it has to do with the fact that the owners of these loans change. By the time the person makes the first payment, it ...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to start by saying that the memos that we received from the staff before this meeting were helpful, and I think that Vincent provided the right set of questions to guide our discussions. The goals that were laid out in the memo that ...