Before proceeding further, I should say that the views I will express today are my own and are not necessarily shared by my colleagues in the Federal Reserve System.1  Car and driver: a misleading analogy Eight times each year the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets to set U.S. monetary policy - which, under current operating procedures, amounts to choosing a target for the federal funds rate, a short-term interest rate that the Federal Reserve influences by controlling the supply of bank reserves.
In particular, I am interested in assessing the recent poor performance of the world economy in order to identify possible underlying problems, which may help to design appropriate economic policy measures. I would also like to examine the implications of the weak world economic evolution for developing countries.