petg,
I wonder if this meeting has anything to do with their friends over at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta putting out a new forecast for first quarter 2016 US GDP growth of only 0.1% (basically zero) on 8/4. The next output from their model will be released on 13 April 2016. As you can see from their chart below their number has been "evolving" down since last quarters official read. If you read the note in the model description that the Atlanta Fed put out (extract below)
"As stated by economists Jon Faust and Jonathan H. Wright in a 2009 paper, “by mirroring key elements of the data construction machinery of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Fed staff forms a relatively precise estimate of what BEA will announce for the previous quarter’s GDP even before it is announced.”
The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model also mimics the methods used by the BEA to estimate real GDP growth. The GDPNow forecast is constructed by aggregating statistical model forecasts of 13 subcomponents that comprise GDP. Other private forecasters use similar approaches to “nowcast” GDP growth. However, these forecasts are not updated more than once a month or quarter, are not publicly available, or do not have forecasts of the subcomponents of GDP that add “color” to the top-line number. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model fills these three voids."
The Atlanta Fed model mimics the methods used by the BEA and if the Fed staff are using the same "mirroring" they'll be seeing the same picture as the Atlanta Fed model.
In light of forecasts of US GDP going to zero in the first quarter of 2016 it might be time to call an urgent meeting to review interest rate policy maybe!!!. Eshmun
https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow.aspx?panel=1
Latest forecast: 0.1 percent — April 8, 2016
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2016 is
0.1 percent on April 8, down from 0.4 percent on April 5. After this morning's wholesale trade report from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the forecast for the contribution of inventory investment to first-quarter real GDP growth fell from –0.4 percentage points to –0.7 percentage points.
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