The Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve is no longer expected to announce a further round of monetary easing when it concludes its two-day meeting in Washington next week. The fact that the hawks have lost enthusiasm for more quantitative easing is scarcely surprising, given the fall in unemployment, and the stickiness of inflation.
But until very recently the hawks have not been in control of the committee. What is more surprising is that the powerful group of doves, which includes Ben Bernanke, Bill Dudley and Janet Yellen, and which normally has disproportionate weight on the FOMC, has also taken QE off the agenda .
So is that the end of QE? Not necessarily. The doves seem to have changed their policy conclusion without changing their basic view of the economy. In recent speeches, they have all repeated that the current unemployment rate of 8.2 per cent will remain two to three percentage points above the level consistent with the Fed’s mandate for some time. This judgment depends on their interpretation of the work of three distinguished economists: Arthur Okun (1928-80), William Beveridge (1879-1963) and John Taylor (who is still alive and kicking at Stanford University).