Your Friendly Neighborhood Fed

Today’s morning news update on my site includes a link to a good New York Times article on the bond desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

I mention this because a few weeks ago I thought that writing about the NYFRB’s Permanent Open Market Operations (or POMO) would make for a good article topic.

There seems to be a lot of confusion on this topic. I think POMO has a sinister reputation that it doesn’t deserve. My goal was to write a Planet Money-style article on POMO in an attempt to try to make something complicated easy to understand (the Planet Money team does great work).

I contacted the New York Fed and asked if I could speak with someone on the bond desk. Well! You would have thought I’d called up the Pentagon and asked, “Hi, may I please have some of your launch codes?”

Let’s just say that the press office was comically unhelpful and unprofessional. Well, not completely unhelpful. They did refer me to the FAQ section of their website. I pressed some more and they finally said I could talk to someone. Then they changed their minds and said I couldn’t.

So in my attempt to show that the NY Fed really isn’t some crazy secretive institution, I found that that they’re precisely that.

Posted by on January 11th, 2011 at 9:21 am


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.