The Federal Reserve decided not to launch a third round of quantitative easing
(QE3) or expand its set of accommodative monetary policies at its Federal Open
Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday. Todays FOMC announcement was
released at 12:30pm ET rather than its usual 2:15pm ET because Chairman Ben
Bernanke will be holding his second-ever post-FOMC press conference later this
afternoon. The large majority of the FOMC statement was identical to the
previous statement in September with the Fed choosing to continue with
Operation Twist. One noteable difference at todays meeting was the existence of
only one dissenting vote that from Charles Evans, who supported additional
policy accommodation at this time. At the prior two meetings, three Fed
presidents Fisher, Plosser, and Kocherlakota voted against committing to a
near-zero Fed funds rate through mid-2013 and against Operation Twist. Bernanke
held his first and only press conference in April of this year which turned out
to largely be a non-event.
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