This is a Cato podcast special for Wednesday, November 14th, 2007.

I'm Keila Brown.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke addressed the Cato Institute's annual monetary

conference this morning, announcing new steps toward additional transparency that he hopes will

improve the feds interaction with the public.

This is a segment of his speech available in full at our website

Cato.org.

In testimony to the Congress at the time of my nomination as Chairman in 2005, I

pledged to continue the trend toward greater openness sustained under Chairman Greenspan. In so doing I stress the importance of

continuity with the policies and strategies that have served the American

economy well.

Any further changes, I promised, would come only pursuant to a consensus within the

FOMC that those changes would enhance the ability of the committee to pursue its dual mandate of achieving

maximum employment and price stability.

Toward that end, the FOMC has engaged in extensive deliberations over the past year or so to consider further

steps towards greater transparency.

Guided by a subcommittee headed by Board Vice Chairman Donald Cohn, the FOMC reviewed the full range of our communications

with the public.

As indicated in a statement issued by the FOMC today, these discussions have led to a decision to increase

the frequency and expand the content of the publicly released economic projections that are

made by Federal Reserve Board members and

Reserve Bank Presidents. As I mentioned, the Federal Reserve has published

...