A friend just mailed us a few items that were posted at Zerohedge today as they came over the wire services. As is by now a well-worn tradition, individual FOMC board members (both members of the board of governors as well as district presidents) are delivering speeches and interviews galore in the wake of the most recent rate non-decision.

The shadowy Mr. Evans

Photo credit: Sukree Sukplang

Superficially, one gets the impression that they aren’t really trying to “explain” anything to the hoi-polloi, since it all sounds remarkably uncoordinated. Today Bill Dudley (GS emissary at the NY Fed) and Charles Evans (Chicago Fed überdove) piped up, which reads as follows in the above mentioned summary by the wire services:

DUDLEY: HE EXPECTS FED PROBABLY WILL RAISE RATES LATER THIS YEAR
DUDLEY: THAT’S NOT CALENDAR GUIDANCE, THAT’S DATA-DEPENDENT
DUDLEY: FED RATE PATH WILL BE SHAPED PARTLY BY MKT REACTION

*EVANS: BEST APPROACH IS FOR LATER LIFTOFF, GRADUAL TIGHTENING

*EVANS SAYS `EXTRA-PATIENT APPROACH’ TO TIGHTENING IS WARRANTED
*EVANS SAYS `THERE IS NO PROBLEM IN MODERATELY OVERSHOOTING 2%
*EVANS: APPROPRIATE TO RAISE RATES VERY GRADUALLY AFTER LIFTOFF
*EVANS SAYS HE SEES SUBSTANTIAL COSTS TO PREMATURE RATE LIFTOFF

Apart from the bewildering factoid that Mr. Dudley seems to think the phrase “end of the year” has nothing to do with the calendar, the two gentlemen seem to contradict each other. One of them keeps pretending that a rate hike remains “imminent”, while the other is telling us that after abandoning its employment rate guidance, the Fed should ditch its “inflation target” guidance next.

After all, we’re in a never-ending “emergency”. It evidently hasn’t occurred to Mr. Evans just yet that the policies of the organization he’s a member of may be directly responsible for said permanent state of economic emergency.