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Size of Rate Increments

William Poole

Wed, June 28, 2006

It could well be that we will need additional restraint in the future, but we should not have a clear presumption that we will be raising the funds rate in the future. The decision in August should depend on all the information that we get between now and August, and we should not try to build in a particular assumption on the policy decision. In fact, if I were to be as neutral as I can be on this, I would say something like 50 percent odds that we would hold steady in August and 50 percent odds of another 25 basis point raise. You could take the mean of that and say, “Well, let’s just be done with it today and raise the funds rate an additional 12½ basis points.” [Laughter] But I think that would be pretty silly.

William Poole

Fri, February 24, 2006

Another explicit understanding could be that all policy adjustments will be in increments of 25 basis points, unless compelling reasons argue for larger moves.