The Federal Reserve decided not to launch a third round of
quantitative easing (QE3) or expand its set of accommodative monetary
policies at its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on
Wednesday.
Today’s FOMC announcement was released at 12:30pm ET –
rather than its usual 2:15pm ET – because Chairman Ben Bernanke will be
holding his second-ever post-FOMC press conference later this afternoon.
The
large majority of the FOMC statement was identical to the previous
statement in September – with the Fed choosing to continue with
Operation Twist.
One noteable difference at today’s meeting was
the existence of only one dissenting vote – that from Charles Evans, who
“supported
additional policy accommodation at this time.”
At the prior two meetings, three Fed
presidents – Fisher, Plosser, and Kocherlakota – voted against
committing to a near-zero Fed funds rate through mid-2013 and against
Operation Twist.
Bernanke held his first and only press conference
in April of this year – which turned out to largely be a non-event. As
GoldAlert wrote at the time, “It was quite disappointing to hear the
softball questions lobbed at Bernanke by many members of the mainstream
media. The American people would have been much better served if the
journalists in attendance had asked the type of challenging, more
serious questions that get to the heart of the unfortunate consequences
of the Fed’s policies.”
The full FOMC statement is available at the Fed’s website:
Gold
futures showed a modest reaction to the Fed statement, as they
maintained the large majority of their gains near $1,738 per ounce.
By jturbin