Great Word Clouds of Changing Fed Minutes

The team over at Bloomberg puts out a daily economic piece that is probably one of the best in the business. They have recently begun to add word clouds as a way of seeing trends in a different manner. Below is the last six Fed Minutes, out together so that the most often used words appear more often and larger.

Notice that there has been a change since April when the biggest concern was over inflation to where now it is economic conditions and policy. More below….

From Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve said some officials last month wanted to keep further asset purchases as an option to boost the economy as policy makers saw “considerable uncertainty” that U.S. growth will pick up. Most participants favored giving additional information on the central bank‘s goals and how they influence the Fed‘s decisions, and most “saw advantages” in tying the Fed‘s near-zero interest rates to more specific developments in the economy, the Fed said in minutes of the Sept. 20-21 session, released today in Washington. Such changes may be expressed in ways other than the postmeeting statement, the Fed said.

The debate culminated in the Federal Open Market Committee‘s decision to replace $400 billion of Treasuries in the central bank‘s portfolio with longer-term debt to reduce borrowing costs. Three officials dissented. “A number of participants saw large-scale asset purchases as potentially a more potent tool that should be retained as an option in the event that further policy action to support a stronger economic recovery was warranted,” the minutes said. Policy makers also decided on Sept. 21 to reinvest maturing housing debt into mortgage-backed securities in part to keep the Fed‘s Treasury holdings from getting too large and possibly causing a “deterioration in Treasury market functioning,” the minutes said. ”” By Scott Lanman and Craig Torres