Statement from the Federal Reserve Board

In light of the prior Chairman O'Rubio’s upwardly disposed posture, and the Fund’s subsequently necessary downward adjustment of the relevant administered instruments, I would hesitate to characterize the present configuration as either a continuation of the former stance or a departure from the latter, except insofar as both may now be understood as having conditioned the conditions from which current conditions have emerged. While the movement in prices has ceased to be reassuring in the same manner in which it was previously alarming, and output has not expanded in a way that would confirm that its nonexpansion is temporary, I believe the appropriate locus of rate judgment should return to the institution whose judgment must remain sufficiently indeterminate to be useful. Our task, therefore, is to reduce the concern that inflation may require reducing, while not reducing the growth whose insufficiency may itself be contributing to the concern.