For all of you Fed wonks and Bernanke groupies out there, here’s instant analysis of the Fed meeting courtesy of Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo (By the way, in case you hadn’t heard, and in case you care, they left rates unchanged, at 5.25%).

Anxious to avoid another miscommunication like the one that occurred with the March FOMC statement, the May FOMC statement released this afternoon was a bit of a yawn, perhaps intentionally so.

The Fed once again lowered their assessment of current economic growth, replacing the phrase, “recent indicators have been mixed…” with “Economic growth slowed in the first part of the year…” But at the same time they left their growth outlook unchanged.

The Fed still sees moderate expansion ahead. On inflation, the Fed remains concerned, which will disappoint some on Wall Street who have been lobbying for a rate cut. The Fed’s inflation bias remains very much intact.
This statement is very much in-line with our outlook of a Fed on the sidelines until year-end, as it continues to monitor the evolution of U.S. economic growth and inflation.

Want to see these FOMC statements yourself? They’re out there just waiting for someone to open them up and have a read. That link will also get you to the dates of the next meetings and probably more than you’d ever want to know about the Fed folks.

Our hometown guy, Gary Stern, doesn’t get a vote this year, although he is an alternate.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.