Chapter 10 Conduct of Monetary Policy: Tools, Goals, Strategy, and Tactics 249THE PRACTICING MANAGERUsing a Fed WatcherAs we have seen, the most important player in the determination of the U.S. money supply and interest rates is the Federal Reserve. When the Fed wants to inject reserves into the system, it conducts open market purchases of bonds, which cause their prices to increase and their interest rates to fall, at least in the short term. If the Fed withdraws reserves from the system, it sells bonds, thereby depressing their price and raising their interest rates. From a longer-run perspective, if the Fed pursues an expansionary monetary policy with high money growth, inflation will rise and interest rates will rise as well. Contractionary monetary policy is likely to lower inflation in the long run and lead to lower interest rates.Knowing what actions the Fed might be taking can thus help financial institution managers predict the future course of interest rates with greater accuracy. Because, as we have seen, changes in interest rates have a major impact on a financial institution’s profitability, the managers of these institutions are particularly interested in scrutinizing the Fed’s behavior. To help in this task, managers hire so-called Fed watchers, experts on Federal Reserve behavior who may have worked in the Federal Reserve System and so have an insider’s view of Federal Reserve operations.Divining what the Fed is up to is by no means easy. The Fed does not disclose the content of the minutes of FOMC meetings at which it decides the course of monetary policy until three weeks after each meeting. In addition, the Fed does not provide information on the amount of certain transactions and frequently tries to obscure from the market whether it is injecting reserves into the banking system by making open market purchases and sales simultaneously.
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