Ben Bernanke’s tumultuous and newsworthy tenure running the Federal Reserve ended with a whimper today. The final FOMC statement of his era is almost unchanged from the previous one and even that overstates it, as the changes almost all involve tense switches to reflect the fact that it’s a month later.
I’m slightly scratching my head at this one: “Labor market indicators were mixed but on balance showed further improvement.” That’s certainly true over a three or six month horizon, but the most recent data we’ve seen on the labor market didn’t seem to me to show much sign of improvement. Onward to the Yellen era!
