{"text":[[{"start":6.05,"text":"Alan Greenspan — the titan of central banking who died this week aged 100 — had an extremely specific way with words. "}],[{"start":14.100000000000001,"text":"“Since I’ve become a central banker, I’ve learned to mumble with great incoherence,” goes one much-repeated quote, from early in his near 20-year stint as chair of the US Federal Reserve. This captured a legendary communication style that came to be known as “Fedspeak”."}],[{"start":30.55,"text":"Incoherent mumbling or, as Greenspan put it on another occasion, engaging in a “form of syntax destruction” to avoid answering questions, continued a tradition of purposeful obfuscation by central bankers. As he said: “That’s something which I learned from Paul [Volcker, his predecessor], who did that in a manner which was approaching a work of art.” "}],[{"start":52.05,"text":"Of course, Fedspeak doesn’t always stay at the Fed. After Greenspan claimed to have dropped multiple hints to his long-term partner, the journalist Andrea Mitchell, that he intended to propose, she said: “he used Fedspeak . . . who knew he was proposing? I couldn’t figure it out.” "}],[{"start":69.05,"text":"Another of Greenspan’s best-known phrases — “irrational exuberance”, used about the US stock market in 1996 — seems uncharacteristic in its clarity. But the full quote was actually somewhat less than definitive: “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?”"}],[{"start":89,"text":"But, as with other aspects of Greenspan’s long, varied life, his deliberately ambiguous communication coexisted with other very different instincts. In practice, if not in words, he made the Fed, where he was chair from 1987 to 2006, more transparent. "}],[{"start":106.1,"text":"His successor, Ben Bernanke, was rightly credited with bringing about a communication revolution at the central bank, including by instituting regular press conferences in 2011. But he only accelerated a process already under way. Bernanke himself wrote that Greenspan was a “transitional figure” in the shift to more transparency."}],[{"start":127.69999999999999,"text":"In 1994, the Fed began the practice of announcing changes to interest rates. Before then, markets had to work out the bank’s decision based on the activity of its New York trading desk. In 2000, these statements became a regular fixture after every rate-setting meeting. That created a vehicle for an early form of Fed “forward guidance”. Meeting minutes were published within. "}],[{"start":152.29999999999998,"text":"After the US stock market lost nearly a quarter of its value on “Black Monday” in October 1987, there was no obfuscation from the Fed. Only a few months into Greenspan’s tenure, the bank was crystal clear that it was flooding the system with dollars: “The Federal Reserve . . . affirmed today its readiness as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system.”"}],[{"start":175.54999999999998,"text":"The direction of travel since Greenspan has been towards more communication, not less, reflecting the power of Fedspeak in shaping expectations, as well as the changing nature of media and markets."}],[{"start":187.99999999999997,"text":"But the new chair, Kevin Warsh, wants to go a different way. At his first press conference last week, he said the bank would no longer provide forward guidance and refused to answer questions about future Fed moves. Regular press conferences may be on the way out too, depending on the findings of a new communications task force."}],[{"start":206.84999999999997,"text":"But now the Fed has embraced transparency, it may be difficult to reverse. To avoid offering forward guidance altogether, the bank will have to refrain from forecasting or saying anything about the future. This makes it harder to explain policy decisions."}],[{"start":223.54999999999995,"text":"Syntax destruction, or not, Greenspan’s legacy of transparency seems likely to endure. To use another famous Fedspeak phrase, this time from a different chair, Jerome Powell: Warsh’s attempts to communicate less may prove “transitory”."}],[{"start":243.79999999999995,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782549661_8058.mp3"}