FOMC Statement

The Federal Open Market Committee decided to keep its target for the federal funds rate at 5.25percent on August 8,2006. Economic growth has moderated from its quite strong pace earlier this year, partly reflecting a gradual cooling of the housing market …     

FOMC会议纪要点评

前几个月公布的就业数据显示了美国就业形势复苏良好,同时非农就业数据在FOMC会议之后发布,且6月数据超预期,我们认为未来QE削减已定,只是具体规模会根据未来的就业数据进行微调。我们预计,未来美联储将会围绕QE退出路线图展开讨论,或比之前的预想更快一些提出QE收缩的方案。 事件美国联邦于7月11日公开了市场委员会（简称FOMC）会议纪要。纪要内容显示美联储退出QE的时间可能会比市场预期晚。伯南克在会议上指出美国经济在可以预期的未来还是需要高度宽松的货币政策,目前美国的通胀仍维持在低位,虽然当前总体失业率已经降低到7．6％,但实际就业形势仍可能比这一表面的经济数据所反映的更为严峻。     

What do boards really do? Evidence from minutes of board meetings

We analyze a unique database from a sample of real-world boardrooms — minutes of board meetings and board-committee meetings of eleven business companies for which the Israeli government holds a substantial equity interest. We use these data to evaluate the underlying assumptions and predictions of models of boards of directors. These models generally fall into two categories: “managerial models” that assume boards play a direct role in managing the firm, and “supervisory models” that assume that boards monitor top management but do not make business decisions themselves. Consistent with the supervisory models, our minutes-based data suggest that boards spend most of their time monitoring management: approximately two-thirds of the issues boards discussed were of a supervisory nature, they were presented with only a single option in 99% of the issues discussed, and they disagreed with the CEO only 2.5% of the time. Nevertheless, at times boards do play a managerial role: Boards requested to receive further information or an update for 8% of the issues discussed, and they took an initiative with respect to 8.1% of them. In 63% of the meetings, boards took at least one of these actions or did not vote in line with the CEO. Taken together our results suggest that boards can be characterized as active monitors.