Tom Schlesinger Quotations

More than any of his predecessors, he has gone public with every issue under the sun. I'm not sure there's a right answer, but I think it's worth talking about in a public forum what ought to be boundaries of the Fed governors' comments.

I would bet anything they rue the day they got trapped into these terms like measured, patient. The signals Greenspan and others have given is that measured still the way they want to present their stance. It's now measured with a 'but,' behind it though.

I would be nervous about picking an inflation-targeting champion as my next Fed chairman given the potential impact on employment growth.

Certainly the Fed has voiced more concern over inflation for public consumption that it has in previous years, so it's not surprising that markets would respond accordingly. It just really doesn't jive very well with the facts on the ground.

Bush has done a good job of using his free hand to break from a narrow group of selections in terms of background.

He does have an academic background. He had to make things clear to undergraduate students, even if they were undergraduate students at Princeton.

He might try to draw a bright line in the hearing - say that he won't be drawn into commenting on issues not directly related to the Fed's responsibilities, ... We'll have to see how that plays. It is important that the Fed chairman be seen as independent.

He's Alan Greenspan all purpose sage, ... He seldom has anyone tell him, 'Why don't you be more like Fed chairman of the past?'

Greenspan is an orthodox thinker in most ways, but you have give him credit for questioning consensus thinking.

I remember thinking, man, if you think that's problematic, wait until you stick around Washington a little bit longer.

It'd be fascinating to hear what he thinks, if he'd actually tell you. The guys who are most frequently mentioned for the job are all ivory tower types. I don't think anyone has the breadth and experience dealing with the business community as Greenspan did when he came on the job. Certainly they don't have as much experience as he accumulated in the past 17 years.

What the long-term effect that has on the Fed as a political institution is one of those things we'll be watching closely. It's hard to tell where it is going to lead.

At a basic and obvious level, it ties into gut level concern of ordinary people.

It would be unhealthy for the Fed to get bogged down in an internal debate about the merits and demerits of inflation targeting if it prevented

People got thrown for a loop by the stock market crash at beginning of the decade. It doesn't seem impossible that local housing bubbles bursting would have an effect on people's views of savings. Obviously consumption would take a hit if people save at the historic rate.

As a group, they will have a sense they have something to prove and that what they have to prove is they can be tough on price stability.

There will be a perceptible political call by people for a more rule-bound policy after the magician (Greenspan) leaves the stage.

It's a rather flexible term that gives them the chance to take many different actions,

It's more difficult for a governor to have anything resembling a common touch if their personal finances are in a different solar system.

It's quiet clear in the infamous '92, '93, '94 period, the Fed was pretty darned determined not to open up and certainly not to disclose the fact it had these complete transcripts.

It's certainly unpredictable as to how long this is going to go, and how deep it is going to be and what the impact will be.

It will come at a really interesting time because the Fed has been so much more successful in recent years than central banks in countries that favored a more rule-oriented approach. One has to wonder why the Fed would abandon the approach that has worked so well.

They are not using that possibility as a justification for their tightening campaign, in contrast to past years when there was a lot of concern about tightening labor market.

The yields indicate that markets aren't concerned about inflation or that they're confident that the Fed is on the job and will contain it. But there's some sort of subconscious, collective belief that sustained manageable inflation is too good to be true and eventually the other shoe will drop.

The Federal Open Market Committee does not appear from any of its official statements or from the speeches and testimony of its members, to be concerned about excessively strong labor markets or the prospect of wage inflation,