The president of the Richmond Fed resigns

Lacker has sad finish

FOR almost five years inquiries have sought to establish how Medley Global Advisors, a research firm, revealed details of Federal Reserve minutes a day before they were publicly released in October 2012. On April 4th the saga took a sudden twist when Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond Fed (and hence a member of the committee that sets interest rates), quit over the leak.

Mr Lacker spoke to Medley the day before it published its note, in which it revealed that there was “intense debate” within the Fed over the third stage of its quantitative-easing programme, that the central bank was poised to buy more Treasury bonds at a later date, and that the Fed had mulled a promise not to raise interest rates until unemployment fell below 6.5%. (Both the bond-buying and the promise did later happen.) According to Mr Lacker, who was the meeting’s sole dissenter, when Medley mentioned confidential information on the call he “did not refuse or express his inability to comment and the interview continued”. This, he said, “could have been taken...as an acknowledgment or confirmation of the information.”

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