Where was inflation hawk Bill Poole at the Fed meeting?
William Poole voted against last week's Federal Reserve interest-rate cut. So presumably he would have voted against today's. But he didn't. Apparently he wasn't there. If he had been, the vote to cut short-term rates by another half-percentage point would have been 9-2 instead of 9-1. Poole is skipper of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a monetarist and enemy of inflation. From today's statement:
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; Timothy F. Geithner, Vice Chairman; Donald L. Kohn; Randall S. Kroszner; Frederic S. Mishkin; Sandra Pianalto; Charles I. Plosser; Gary H. Stern; and Kevin M. Warsh. Voting against was Richard W. Fisher, who preferred no change in the target for the federal funds rate at this meeting.
UPDATE: base4rip notes correctly that Bill Poole is not a voting FOMC member this year. So how come he voted on the unscheduled cut last week, along with other non-2008 members?
2ND UPDATE: Here is how the Fed explains it. Committee membership doesn't change until the first regularly scheduled FOMC meeting of the calendar year. So even though the Jan. 21 meeting took place in 2008, it was populated by 2007 members because it was unscheduled. So Bill Poole is out of the picture for the rest of the year and Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is playing the bad cop.
Comments
Wow, an appalling lack of knowledge of how the Fed works. Poole (and St. Louis) was on the 2007 committee. His term was for one year, and so he was replaced for 2008 by the Governor from Dallas, Richard Fisher. Who, whaddya know, DID vote against the cut.
Also, Poole wanted the committe to wait until its schedule meeting; he wasn't fundamentally opposed to the cut, just to the timing.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomc.htm
Posted by: Mitch | January 30, 2008 4:32 PM