這是葉倫本月1日就任美聯儲主席後，首次公開闡明貨幣政策思路。受葉倫發言的影響，在11日的美國股票市場，道瓊斯30種工業股平均指數繼續上漲。與上一交易日的收盤價相比，漲幅一度達到近100美元。
葉倫針對新興市場國家的貨幣風險指出，「現階段不會對美國經濟構成重大風險」。在接受自由提問時表示，「量化寬鬆的目的是促進美國經濟增長，如果具備就業復甦等條件，將分階段走向正常化」，顯示了沒必要暫時停止縮減寬鬆的想法。
在提及美國經濟時葉倫指出，「消費和企業投資增速在2013年下半年出現了好轉」。同時還表示，「美國經濟的牽引力已經進一步加強」，對經濟前景表達了樂觀預期。
關於引發關注的量化寬鬆的縮減速度，葉倫僅僅稱「證券購買仍未敲定計劃」，避免了明確表態。同時還表示如果就業穩定得到保證，原則上今後將按一定幅度減少在1月的FOMC上已減至每月650億美元的長期證券購買金額。
關於暫時停止逐漸縮減寬鬆的條件，葉倫稱是「經濟和就業預期發生顯著變化」。
（矢澤俊樹 華盛頓）
Yellen Says Recovery in Labor Market Far From Complete
Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen pledged to maintain her predecessor’s policies by scaling back stimulus in “measured steps” and signaled that the bar is high for a change in that plan.
Only a “notable change in the outlook” for the economy would prompt policy makers to slow the pace of tapering, Yellen said in response to a question today during testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. “It’s important for us to take our time to assess” the significance of recent reports showing payrolls expanded less than projected, she said.
Stocks and Treasury yields climbed as Yellen, delivering her first public remarks as Fed chairman, said financial-market turmoil doesn’t pose a major risk to the outlook for the U.S. economy and repeated the Fed’s statement that asset purchases aren’t on a “pre-set course.”
“Her message was continuity of policy and, matching that with continuity of outlook, suggests they remain on the same course,” saidKeith Hembre, a former Minneapolis Fed researcher who helps oversee $125 billion as chief economist at Nuveen Asset Management LLC in Minneapolis.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rallied 1.2 percent to 1,821.62 at 3:32 p.m. in New York. The yield on the 10-year note rose five basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 2.72 percent.
Janet Yellen, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers her semi-annual report on... Read More
Asset Prices
Asset prices aren’t at “worrisome levels” even after the S&P 500 soared 30 percent last year, Yellen said, although the Fed is on the lookout for any threat of a bubble.“Our ability to detect bubbles is not perfect, but looking at a range of traditional valuation measures doesn’t suggest that asset prices broadly speaking are in bubble territory,” she said in response to a question.
The Fed chairman spoke days after a government report showed the jobless rate unexpectedly declined almost to the Fed’s threshold for considering an increase in the benchmark interest rate, even as payrolls growth cooled.
Yellen said the unemployment rate alone isn’t an adequate gauge of labor-market health.
Job seekers during a career fair at a hotel in Dallas on Jan. 22, 2014.
Watching Volatility
Yellen also said that the Fed has been “watching closely” volatility in global financial markets and that “our sense is that at this stage these developments do not pose a substantial risk to the U.S. economic outlook.”In more than four hours of questioning, Yellen was pressed for her views on issues ranging from financial regulation and the budget deficit to coal prices and income inequality. She took care to avoid wading into partisan debates on subjects like the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the labor market.
In response to a question from Texas Democrat Ruben Hinojosa, Yellen said she’s troubled by growing income inequality.
“It’s one of the most important issues and one of the most disturbing trends facing the nation,” Yellen said. “Rising inequality is partly a matter of a weak job market that we are trying to address.”
GAO Audits
Yellen pushed back against Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann’s assertion that Government Accountability Office audits of the Fed should be broadened to encompass monetary policy deliberations.
Janet Yellen, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers her semi-annual report on... Read More
Yellen, 67, used her testimony to praise her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, for helping “make our economy and financial system stronger” and said she’d continue his strategy.
“I expect a great deal of continuity in the FOMC’s approach to monetary policy,” Yellen said in her prepared remarks. She said she served on the Federal Open Market Committee “as we formulated our current policy strategy and I strongly support that strategy.”
Asset Purchases
The Fed said in December that it would start reducing the monthly pace of asset purchases, citing progress toward its goal of full employment. It announced a $10 billion reduction that month, followed by a cut of the same size in January, to $65 billion.The central bank has said it will keep buying bonds until the outlook for the labor market has “improved substantially.”
Fed policy makers have also sought to reassure investors that while they are tapering bond purchases, they still intend to hold the Fed’s target rate near a record low.
Beginning in December 2012, the FOMC said it would keep the rate near zero “at least as long” as unemployment was above 6.5 percent. At the December 2013 meeting, it strengthened that statement, saying the rate is likely to stay near zero until “well past the time” unemployment falls below 6.5 percent, a strategy Yellen repeated today.
Unemployment in January fell to 6.6 percent, the lowest since October 2008, from 6.7 percent, a Labor Department report showed last week. Job growth in December and January was the weakest of any two-month period in the past three years.
Declining Unemployment
Joblessness has fallen faster than policy makers expected. When they first announced the threshold, most of them expected a rate of 7.4 percent to 7.7 percent at the end of 2013 and 6.8 percent to 7.3 percent at the end of this year.Yellen took over as Fed chairman on Feb. 3 after serving for three years as Bernanke’s deputy. She has supported the bond purchases that expanded the Fed’s balance sheet to a record $4.1 trillion, and she helped craft a communications strategy designed to shape expectations for the future path of interest rates.
As vice chairman, Yellen also led a subcommittee that formalized the Fed’s goals for inflation and unemployment. The Fed now aims for inflation of 2 percent over the longer run. It has been undershooting that goal: the Fed’s preferred gauge of consumer prices climbed 1.1 percent last year.
Yellen hadn’t given detailed comments on the outlook for monetary policy and the economy since April, aside from her confirmation hearing in November. Outside of the confirmation process, she hadn’t testified before Congress as a central bank official since July 1996, when she was a Fed governor appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Target Rate
The Fed has held its target interest rate near zero since December 2008 and engaged in three rounds of bond buying. The easing policies helped push the S&P 500 up as much as 173 percent from a 12-year low in 2009.The index is down about 1.4 percent this year, driven lower by turmoil in emerging markets and speculation about the direction of Fed policy. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has lost 6.7 percent this year through yesterday.
“Investors appear to have been differentiating among” emerging market economies “based on their economic vulnerabilities,” according a Monetary Policy Report presented to the House committee. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey are “among the economies that appear to have been the most affected” by the sell-off, according to the report.
Overall, “the degree of vulnerability across economies appears to be materially lower compared with past episodes,” because of more-flexible exchange rates and lower inflation.
