Fed to Indicate Rate ‘Bias’ After Policy Meetings

The Federal Reserve promised Thursday to lift partly the veil of secrecy surrounding its closed-door meetings, but stopped short of disclosing any details about its most recent interest rate deliberations.

The Fed said it would sometimes issue a statement immediately after its meetings to reveal its attitude, or “bias,” on the likely direction of future rate moves.

Although the Fed said it would on occasion tell the public whether it is leaning toward higher or lower rates, it made clear it won’t do so after every meeting of its policy-setting Open Market Committee.

“The committee would do so on those occasions when it wanted to communicate to the public a major shift in its views about the balance of risks or the likely direction of future policy,” the Fed said.

The new policy was announced in the records of the Fed’s Dec. 22 meeting and released on Thursday.

The Dec. 22 records show that the Fed, which cut rates three times late last year in a bid to shield the economy from global market turmoil, at that time had no “bias” to either raise or lower interest rates in the near term.

But the Fed on Thursday kept mum about its latest meeting, which concluded Wednesday.

Still, “the language of this [new] policy suggests they did not adopt a tightening bias, otherwise they would have told us,” said Chris Rupkey, economist at Bank of Tokyo/Mitsubishi.