Fedspeak

In monetary policy of the United States, the term Fedspeak (also known as Greenspeak) is what Alan Blinder called "a turgid dialect of English" used by Federal Reserve Board chairs in making wordy, vague, and ambiguous statements.[1][2] The strategy, which was used most prominently by Alan Greenspan, was used to prevent financial markets from overreacting to the chairman's remarks.[3][4] The coinage is an intentional parallel to Newspeak.[5]

Fedspeak when used by Alan Greenspan is often called Greenspeak. An alternative definition of Greenspeak is "the coded and careful language employed by U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan."[6]

Edwin le Heron and Emmanuel Carre state that "Nowadays, 'Fedspeak' (Bernanke, 2004) means clear and extensive communication of the Fed's action."[7] Chairman Ben Bernanke and Chairwoman Yellen have effected a major change in Fed communication policy departing from the obfuscation that characterized the previous three decades. In 2014 a new detailed level of Fed communication was dubbed Fedspeak 3.0.[8] In 2018, Chairman Jerome Powell would begin press conferences with a summary statement in plain English, in contrast to his predecessors who would read lengthy prepared statements loaded with monetary policy jargon.[9]

In 2021, Powell used a recursive syntax in saying that "you can think of this meeting that we had as the ‘talking about talking about’ meeting."[10] He added, "I now suggest that we retire that term."

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference BlinderStudies2001 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Hanley, William (August 7, 2010). "What will fly hear Fed say on Tuesday?". Financial Post. Retrieved 18 August 2010.[dead link]
  3. ^ Leonard, Devin; Peter Coy (August 13, 2012). "Alan Greenspan on His Fed Legacy and the Economy". Business Week. p. 65. Archived from the original on August 12, 2012.
  4. ^ Weeks, Linton; Berry, John M. (March 24, 1997). "The Shy Wizard of Money". Washington Post. p. A1. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  5. ^ Farber, Amy (April 19, 2013). "Historical Echoes: Fedspeak as a Second Language". Liberty Street Economics. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
  6. ^ McFedries, Paul. "Greenspeak". www.wordspy.com. Archived from the original on 4 September 2014. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  7. ^ Wray, L. Randall; Forstater, Mathew (2006). Money, financial instability and stabilization policy. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-84542-474-9. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
  8. ^ Cox, Jeff (June 17, 2014). "Fedspeak 3.0: The 'dot plot'". CNBC. CNBC. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  9. ^ Jim Tankersley; Neil Irwin (June 13, 2018). "Fed Raises Interest Rates and Signals 2 More Increases Are Coming". New York Times. Retrieved June 14, 2018. He [Jerome Powell] began his session with the news media with what he called a 'plain English' description of what the Fed had done and why, a contrast with the practice of Ms. Yellen and her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, both Ph.D. economists who prefaced their appearances with long prepared statement loaded with monetary policy jargon.
  10. ^ "Federal Reserve meeting full recap". CNBC. June 16, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.