Philly Fed's Plosser: More to do on communication (by Steve Goldstein)
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, who was part of a Federal Reserve committee that changed the way the central bank describes interest-rate forecasts, said Wednesday it should go further in boosting communication to enhance effectiveness of monetary policy. Plosser said the summary of economic projections should include more information about the linkages among the economic variables and the associated policy paths. "A natural next step would be to include a matrix of output, inflation, and unemployment, and the associated policy path assumptions that each policymaker submitted," Plosser said in a speech at the Forecasters Club in New York. He also said the Fed should do a more comprehensive monetary policy report four times a year, that the Federal Open Market Committee should adopt clearer guidelines on how policy evolves with economic conditions and that the Fed should describe policy in terms of the "variables in a rule that is robust across models."