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For years, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy actions were a mystery. Authorities held meetings without telling markets whether they had raised or lowered rates or left policy unchanged. Federal Reserve watchers inferred decisions from the movement of short-term interest rates.
Now the central bank, founded in 1913, has an Instagram account and holds press conferences after each meeting. The time has changed.
Here is a timeline highlighting highlights of how the Federal Open Market Committee’s communications policy has changed over the years:
- For more than 30 years after the current FOMC structure was created in 1935, policy actions were only reported annually and appeared as an appendix to the FOMC’s annual report.
- Since 1979The central bank has revealed the individual economic projections of the members of the Federal Open Market Committee in the semiannual monetary policy report.
- February 1993: The Federal Open Markets Committee begins publishing minutes of its monetary policy meetings, in roughly their current form, generally about three days after the next FOMC meeting.
- February 1994: The Federal Open Market Committee releases statements on its main policy tool, the overnight federal funds rate.
- February 1995: “Lightly edited” transcripts of FOMC meetings are released with a five-year delay.
- December 2004: The Federal Reserve reduces the delay in publishing the minutes of each FOMC meeting to three weeks after each meeting.
- November 2007: The Federal Reserve increases publications of the FOMC’s Summary of Economic Projections (“SEP”) from twice a year to four times a year. It is included as an appendix to the minutes of the FOMC meeting.
- April 2011: President Ben Bernanke holds the first press conference following the monetary policy decision, which are held four times a year and streamed live on the Federal Reserve website. At that same meeting, the Federal Reserve began issuing the SEP at the same time as the post-meeting statement.
- January 2012: FOMC participants’ assumptions about the appropriate level of the federal funds rate at year-end and in the long run are added to the SEP. This is how the dot diagram is born. That change coincided with the FOMC’s first annual release of its Statement of Long-Term Objectives and Monetary Policy Strategy.
- March 2012: The Federal Reserve launched its Twitter channel.
- January 2019: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell increased post-meeting press conferences to after every meeting, or eight times a year.
- October 2023: fed Unions Threads and Instagram, both part of Meta (META).
