First, members meet twenty-four hours a day, every business day of the year, so that the POMC can respond to every scrap of information on the economy, whether it be an official data release, a statement by an official, or a rumor about the future course of policy.
The idea was taken up by Keynes in the Treatise on Money, and further refined in the General Theory.4 The modern world is more complex than the world of Wicksell and Keynes. We do not expect to drive monthly policy decisions direct from the dusty pages of old books, however classic they may be. But the essential insight is still useful.