As the FOMC’s minutes make clear, however, our experience has also illustrated how difficult it can be for a diverse committee to talk about the future course of rates. I take from this experience the lesson that, despite their drawbacks much of the time, conditional statements from the central bank about the near-term course of policy can be useful in certain circumstances.
These circumstances might include a situation in which the policymakers and the markets seemed to have substantially conflicting forecasts about the economy and the path of policy; such differences persist despite the central bank’s efforts to explain its outlook; and the effect of those divergent views on financial conditions threaten to detract from economic performance.