Money Supply To Lose More Of Its Profile --- End of In-Person Briefings By Fed Signals Drop In Report's Importance
NEW YORK -- The U.S. money-supply report will take yet another step into the shadows this summer.</br></br>Beginning sometime around the first of August, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will start to phase out its weekly, in-person news briefing, where it has given out the weekly money-supply data for decades. It will be replaced with an electronic "virtual" news conference.</br></br>For market players wanting to see the money-supply data, nothing is changing. At 4:30 p.m., the headlines will still scroll across trading screens. The report won't look any different than it did before. There won't be any new details.</br></br>Even so, the change in the process signals just how far the money supply has fallen from its status as one of the pre-eminent economic indicators to one watched by a small audience of technically minded Federal Reserve watchers. The Fed may in fact be behind the curve; most market veterans say it has been literally decades since the money-supply report captured their attention and had the ability to affect the direction of prices.</br></br>"The prime years of importance" were between 1979 and 1982, says Marc Wanshel, an economist with J.P. Morgan. That is when the Federal Reserve was engaged in desperate combat to stomp out what seemed like an intractable inflationary spiral, he said.