The latest Commerce Department report and FOMC press release have, as usual, led to a flood of commentary concerning the various economic indicators that the Fed committee must have mulled over in reaching its decision to put off somewhat longer its plan to start selling off assets it accumulated during the course of several rounds of Quantitative Easing.
Those indicators also inspire me to put in my own two cents concerning things that should, and things that should not, bear on the FOMC’s monetary policy decisions. My thoughts, I hasten to say, pay no heed to the Fed’s dual mandate, which is itself deeply flawed. But then again, since that mandate allows the FOMC all sorts of leeway in making its decisions, I doubt that it would prevent that body from following my advice, assuming it had the least desire to do so.
I have a simple–some may call it quaint–way of deciding whether some information supplies reason for the Fed to either sell off or buy more assets. Here it is: does the information offer reliable evidence of either a shortage or a surplus of nominal money balances?