Rethinking Fed operations: Recommendations to the five task forces
This note condenses material published during 2026 at moneyandbanking.com .
本说明浓缩了 2026 年在 Moneyandbanking.com 上发布的材料。
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has appointed five task forces to reconsider how the Fed operates: inflation frameworks, data, productivity and jobs, communications, and balance sheet policy.
美联储主席凯文·沃什任命了五个工作组来重新考虑美联储的运作方式：通胀框架、数据、生产力和就业、沟通以及资产负债表政策。
Together they amount to the most consequential review of U.S. monetary policy at least since the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) adopted a formal inflation target in 2012.
至少自 2012 年联邦公开市场委员会 (FOMC) 通过正式通胀目标以来，它们共同构成了对美国货币政策最重要的审查。
The review is overdue.
审查已逾期。
Five years of above-target inflation are eroding the credibility the Fed spent decades building.
五年来高于目标的通胀正在侵蚀美联储花费数十年建立的信誉。
The five assignments look separate, but a common problem runs through all of them.
这五项任务看似独立，但都有一个共同的问题。
In each area, the FOMC has to steer by something nobody actually observes.
在每个领域，联邦公开市场委员会都必须遵循没有人实际观察到的东西。
No one measures the inflation trend directly; analysts must filter it out of noisy data.
没有人直接衡量通胀趋势；分析师必须将其从嘈杂的数据中过滤掉。
The statistical agencies typically infer real economic quantities rather than collect them.
统计机构通常推断实际经济数量而不是收集它们。
This practice blurs the co-movement of prices and output that identifies the drivers of inflation.
这种做法模糊了价格和产出的联动，而联动是确定通胀驱动因素的。
Economists estimate potential output ( y* ), the neutral interest rate ( r* ), and the natural rate of unemployment ( u* ), collectively the “stars,” from models fit to history, but no one knows the true values.
经济学家根据适合历史的模型来估计潜在产出 (y*)、中性利率 (r*) 和自然失业率 (u*)，统称为“明星”，但没有人知道真实值。
And even outside the Fed, observers must reverse-engineer how the FOMC responds to incoming information – its reaction function.
即使在美联储之外，观察家也必须对联邦公开市场委员会如何应对传入的信息进行逆向工程——其反应函数。
Reliance on history and stylized models makes all of these estimates fragile, and they fail when the structure of the economy shifts.
对历史和程式化模型的依赖使得所有这些估计都很脆弱，并且当经济结构发生变化时它们就会失败。
In 2021, the conventional measures were slow to signal the rise in trend inflation, and the FOMC’s own quarterly forecasts lagged the data rather than anticipating it.
2021年，传统指标未能及时表明趋势通胀的上升，而联邦公开市场委员会自己的季度预测则滞后于数据，而不是预测数据。
What follows draws on a series of commentaries we published recently at moneyandbanking.com .
以下内容借鉴了我们最近在 Moneyandbanking.com 上发表的一系列评论。
Each section below closes with our recommendation to the relevant task force; we finish with the thread that connects all five.
以下每一节都以我们向相关工作组提出的建议作为结束；我们完成了连接所有五个的线程。
Warsh has committed to the 2% inflation target, for now, but wants to revisit the broader framework.
沃什目前已承诺实现 2% 的通胀目标，但希望重新审视更广泛的框架。
We see no case for changing the target itself.
我们认为没有理由改变目标本身。
Raising it, as some economists proposed after 2008, would buy policy space at the cost of the credibility the Fed is still trying to rebuild, and would look like accommodating the very inflation the public has been suffering.
正如一些经济学家在 2008 年之后提出的那样，提高利率将以牺牲美联储仍在努力重建的信誉为代价来购买政策空间，而且看起来像是在适应公众一直遭受的通货膨胀。
Alternatives such as price-level or nominal-GDP targeting ask the public to trust a decades-long promise, something the FOMC has never demonstrated it can keep.
价格水平或名义GDP目标等替代方案要求公众相信长达数十年的承诺，而联邦公开市场委员会从未证明它可以兑现这一承诺。
The bigger challenge lies elsewhere.
更大的挑战在其他地方。
Without an explicit reaction function, a framework states intentions and nothing more, and intentions collapse under stress.
如果没有明确的反应函数，框架仅说明意图，而意图在压力下就会崩溃。
The FOMC’s 2020 strategy revision replaced a symmetric target with “flexible average inflation targeting” (FAIT), a pledge to let inflation run above 2% for a while to offset earlier shortfalls.
FOMC 的 2020 年战略修订以“灵活平均通胀目标”（FAIT）取代了对称目标，承诺让通胀暂时保持在 2% 以上，以抵消之前的不足。
But the FOMC never provided critical details, so the pledge constrained nothing.
但联邦公开市场委员会从未提供关键细节，因此该承诺没有任何限制。
And, because it offset only shortfalls and not overshoots, this asymmetric approach likely delayed the response to 2021’s inflation surge.
而且，由于这种不对称方法只能抵消缺口，而不会抵消超调，因此可能会延迟对 2021 年通胀飙升的反应。
The FOMC removed both flaws in 2025 .
FOMC 在 2025 年消除了这两个缺陷。
That was the right call, but the new statement is no more explicit than its predecessor about how policy responds to deviations from target.
这是正确的决定，但新声明在政策如何应对偏离目标的问题上并不比前任声明更明确。
Bottom line: Until there is real evidence that a makeup strategy works, the Inflation Framework Task Force should recommend keeping the 2% target as is, and call on the FOMC to publish, in advance, how it will respond to deviations from it, and to keep this disclosure up to date as its reaction function evolves.
底线：在有确凿证据表明弥补策略有效之前，通胀框架工作组应建议保持 2% 的目标不变，并呼吁 FOMC 提前公布它将如何应对偏离该目标的情况，并随着其反应函数的发展不断更新这一披露。
( Read our framework post.
（阅读我们的框架文章。
)
）
Warsh is right that price data are imperfect, but the FOMC already draws on real-time private and alternative data alongside the official statistics, through the Beige Book surveys, business contacts, and market-based measures.
沃什认为价格数据并不完善，这是正确的，但联邦公开市场委员会已经通过褐皮书调查、商业联系和基于市场的措施，利用实时私人数据和替代数据以及官方统计数据。
The shortcomings are more specific than “the data are bad.”
缺点比“数据不好”更具体。
First, the FOMC needs two different numbers, not one: a headline figure that is simple, familiar, and rarely revised, so the public can hold the FOMC accountable; and a separate, filtered estimate of the underlying trend, to guide policy.
首先，FOMC 需要两个不同的数字，而不是一个：一个简单、熟悉且很少修改的总体数字，以便公众可以向 FOMC 追究责任；对潜在趋势进行单独、过滤的估计，以指导政策。
These needn’t conflict, so long as the FOMC keeps them separate rather than asking one number to do both jobs.
只要联邦公开市场委员会将它们分开而不是要求一个数字来完成这两项工作，这些就不必冲突。
Second, the trend estimate embeds assumptions that can go stale.
其次，趋势估计嵌入的假设可能会过时。
The key problem is bias.
关键问题是偏见。
The process that creates the trend estimate can push it systematically above or below the truth.
创建趋势估计的过程可以系统地使其高于或低于事实。
And, this bias can change precisely when policymakers most need a reliable trend estimate – namely, when a broad shock hits.
而且，当政策制定者最需要可靠的趋势估计时，即当广泛的冲击来袭时，这种偏见可能会发生改变。
The Dallas Fed’s “ trimmed mean ,” for example, discards more from the top of each month’s price-change distribution than the bottom, a calibration built for decades when goods prices routinely fell relative to services.
例如，达拉斯联储的“修剪均值”从每月价格变化分布的顶部剔除的数量多于从底部剔除的数量，这种校准是几十年来商品价格相对于服务业经常下跌时建立的。
The distribution of prices has shifted, so as of 2021, the trimmed mean began to understate the trend by perhaps a third of a percentage point .
价格分布已经发生变化，因此截至 2021 年，截尾均值开始低估趋势，幅度可能为三分之一个百分点。
The Dallas Fed itself now warns that tariffs may be pushing its measure down artificially.
达拉斯联储现在警告称，关税可能会人为压低其指标。
More frequent price sampling would help much less than it sounds.
更频繁的价格抽样的帮助远没有听起来那么大。
Sampling error and transitory relative-price movements are unrelated.
抽样误差和暂时的相对价格变动是无关的。
New data shrink only the sampling component, but by our estimates this accounts for only a few percent of the variation around trend, so eliminating it would barely move the estimate.
新数据仅缩小了抽样部分，但根据我们的估计，这仅占趋势变化的百分之几，因此消除它几乎不会改变估计值。
What is missing is quantities.
缺少的是数量。
Distinguishing a demand shock from a supply shock requires observing price and quantity from the same transaction, and no U.S. statistical agency does this systematically: the Census Bureau collects nominal dollar measures such as revenue, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects prices, and for most PCE components the Bureau of Economic Analysis divides one by the other to infer the rest.
区分需求冲击和供给冲击需要观察同一交易的价格和数量，而美国统计机构没有系统地做到这一点：人口普查局收集收入等名义美元指标，劳工统计局收集价格，而对于大多数个人消费支出组成部分，经济分析局将其中一项除以另一项来推断其余部分。
Building a data source that links prices and quantities at the item level is a job for the statistical agencies working together.
建立一个将项目级别的价格和数量联系起来的数据源是统计机构共同努力的一项工作。
Bottom line: The Data Task Force should recommend that the FOMC keep the headline and trend measures explicitly separate and publish its filtering methods.
底线：数据工作组应建议 FOMC 将标题和趋势指标明确分开，并公布其过滤方法。
It should also call on the FOMC to advocate in Congress for the funding that the statistical agencies would need to link prices and quantities at the transaction level.
它还应该呼吁联邦公开市场委员会在国会倡导为统计机构在交易层面将价格和数量联系起来所需的资金。
For now, the FOMC can continue to employ private scanner data to distinguish demand and supply shocks.
目前，联邦公开市场委员会可以继续使用私人扫描仪数据来区分需求和供给冲击。
( Read our inflation measurement post and our high-frequency data post.
（阅读我们的通胀测量帖子和高频数据帖子。
)
）
AI could sharply lift productivity growth, displace large numbers of workers, both, or neither.
人工智能可以大幅提高生产率，取代大量工人，或者两者兼而有之，或者两者都不是。
In a survey of economists across three AI-capability scenarios, disagreement about what a specific scenario would do to the economy accounts for roughly 50 times more of the variance in growth forecasts than disagreement about the technology’s path itself.
在针对三种人工智能能力情景对经济学家进行的一项调查中，对特定情景对经济影响的分歧所造成的增长预测差异大约是对技术路径本身的分歧的 50 倍。
(One of us is a member of the expert panel surveyed in that work.)
（我们中的一个人是这项工作中接受调查的专家小组的成员。）
The point is that no one can forecast this, and the Productivity and Jobs Task Force should encourage the FOMC to say so plainly.
关键是没有人能够预测这一点，生产力和就业工作组应该鼓励联邦公开市场委员会明确地说出这一点。
The task force also should call on the FOMC to develop policy guides that will be more robust in the face of rapid structural change.
该工作组还应呼吁联邦公开市场委员会制定政策指南，以应对快速的结构性变化。
The models that policymakers use to infer y* , r* , and u* are unlikely to be reliable, for example, in a period of rapid AI progress.
例如，在人工智能快速发展的时期，政策制定者用来推断 y* 、 r* 和 u* 的模型不太可能可靠。
The track record is already weak.
往绩记录已经很弱了。
Over three decades, real-time output-gap estimates have missed by 1.2 percentage points on average, gotten the sign wrong in nearly one of every five quarters, and stayed wrong in the same direction for years at a time.
三十年来，实时产出缺口估计平均误差了 1.2 个百分点，几乎每五个季度就有一个出现错误，并且在同一方向上连续多年保持错误。
That pattern helped produce the Great Inflation of the 1970s .
这种模式导致了 20 世纪 70 年代的大通货膨胀。
Some policy rules are less sensitive to uncertainty about the stars, but none eliminates it entirely.
一些政策规则对恒星的不确定性不太敏感，但没有一个可以完全消除它。
So this is a problem to manage rather than solve.
所以这是一个需要管理而不是解决的问题。
In the case of AI, that means adjusting policy cautiously while the path is unclear, preserving the option of decisive action once the picture clarifies.
就人工智能而言，这意味着在路径不明朗时谨慎调整政策，并在情况明朗后保留采取果断行动的选择。
Bottom line: The Productivity and Jobs Task Force should recommend that the FOMC publish a track record for its “star” estimates: average error, typical spread, and past episodes where the sign was wrong.
底线：生产力和就业工作组应建议联邦公开市场委员会公布其“星级”估计的跟踪记录：平均误差、典型利差以及过去出现错误迹象的情况。
The public could then see how much weight those numbers deserve.
然后公众可以看到这些数字值得多大的重视。
At the same time, the task force should encourage the FOMC to undertake a long-run research project aimed at developing more robust policy guides and rules.
与此同时，工作组应鼓励联邦公开市场委员会开展长期研究项目，旨在制定更强有力的政策指南和规则。
Finally, the task force should call on the Fed to adopt a “risk management” stance.
最后，工作组应呼吁美联储采取“风险管理”立场。
Such a stance may favor ensuring policy flexibility until it is possible to reliably anticipate the impact of AI on the economy.
在能够可靠地预测人工智能对经济的影响之前，这种立场可能有利于确保政策灵活性。
( Read our productivity post.
（阅读我们的生产力帖子。
)
）
Warsh’s diagnosis is that the Fed says too much.
沃什的诊断是美联储说得太多。
We think the problem is that it says too little about the thing that matters, namely how the FOMC will actually respond to new information, its reaction function.
我们认为问题在于它对重要的事情说得太少，即联邦公开市场委员会将如何实际应对新信息，即其反应函数。
Communication that doesn’t convey this conditional policy response is superfluous.
不传达这种有条件的政策反应的沟通是多余的。
The clearest room for improvement is in the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP ), the FOMC’s quarterly forecast survey, best known for its “dot plot” of individual rate-path projections.
最明显的改进空间在于经济预测摘要（SEP），这是联邦公开市场委员会的季度预测调查，以其个人利率路径预测的“点阵图”而闻名。
The SEP publishes a distribution of interest rate projections and a distribution of economic forecasts but never links them, so a reader cannot tell whether a participant projecting a high rate expects strong growth, worries about inflation, or simply weighs the same outlook differently.
SEP 发布了利率预测分布和经济预测分布，但从未将它们联系起来，因此读者无法判断预测高利率的参与者是否预期强劲增长、担心通胀，或者只是对同一前景有不同的权衡。
The FOMC should publish that link, putting each participant’s own forecast next to that same participant’s own rate path, ideally with the participant named.
联邦公开市场委员会应该发布该链接，将每个参与者自己的预测放在该参与者自己的利率路径旁边，最好是指定参与者的名字。
That would make the reasoning visible and let the public judge whose analysis has held up over time.
这将使推理变得可见，并让公众判断其分析是否随着时间的推移而成立。
Adding a handful of alternative policy scenarios would extend that visibility beyond the central forecast.
添加一些替代政策情景将使这种可见性超出中央预测。
These scenarios are likely to matter more heading into an AI transition that no one can reliably forecast.
在人工智能转型的过程中，这些场景可能会更加重要，而没有人能够可靠地预测。
It is worth emphasizing that a reaction function by itself is neither a policy commitment nor a looser form of forward guidance.
值得强调的是，反应函数本身既不是政策承诺，也不是宽松形式的前瞻性指导。
It says only that if x occurs, expect the FOMC to respond y .
它只是说，如果 x 发生，预计 FOMC 会响应 y 。
In that sense, the forecasts and scenarios are useful primarily to focus the range of circumstances over which the SEP illuminates the reaction function.
从这个意义上说，预测和情景主要用于关注 SEP 阐明反应函数的情况范围。
Bottom line: The Communications Task Force should recommend enriching the SEP rather than scaling it back: link forecasts to rate paths, name the participants, and add scenarios.
底线：通信工作组应建议丰富 SEP，而不是缩减其规模：将预测与速率路径联系起来，命名参与者，并添加场景。
A quieter FOMC would be less accountable, not more accurate.
一个更安静的联邦公开市场委员会将减少责任，而不是更准确。
( Read our communications post.
（阅读我们的通讯文章。
)
）
Warsh wants a smaller Fed balance sheet, and as a way to keep the central bank’s footprint separate from fiscal policy, that’s a reasonable goal.
沃什希望缩小美联储的资产负债表，并且作为将央行足迹与财政政策分开的一种方式，这是一个合理的目标。
In our view, though, the binding constraint on balance sheet size is the payment system.
但我们认为，对资产负债表规模的约束是支付系统。
The Fed limits banks’ use of daylight overdrafts (short-term loans the Fed extends within the business day so a bank can send a payment before matching funds arrive).
美联储限制银行使用日间透支（美联储在工作日内发放短期贷款，以便银行可以在匹配资金到达之前付款）。
Without that cushion, banks instead seek to hold sufficient reserves up front to cover the largest gap they expect, during a given day, between the payments they send over Fedwire and the ones they receive.
如果没有这种缓冲，银行就会寻求预先持有足够的准备金，以弥补他们预期在某一天通过 Fedwire 发送的付款与收到的付款之间的最大缺口。
That structural need is what keeps both reserve demand and the balance sheet from shrinking much further without other changes.
这种结构性需求使得准备金需求和资产负债表在不进行其他改变的情况下不会进一步萎缩。
Trimming reserve demand can relax that constraint.
削减准备金需求可以放松这一限制。
To reduce the balance sheet safely, the FOMC needs to introduce reforms that lower demand before attempting to lower supply.
为了安全地缩减资产负债表，联邦公开市场委员会需要在尝试降低供应之前引入降低需求的改革。
Cutting supply first risks repeating the money-market disruptions of September 2019 , when the Fed misjudged how many reserves banks actually needed and shrank the balance sheet too far.
首先削减供应可能会重蹈2019年9月货币市场混乱的覆辙，当时美联储误判了银行实际需要的准备金数量，并过度缩减了资产负债表。
Two reforms would help most.
两项改革将最有帮助。
“Netting” would shrink banks’ settlement obligations substantially.
“净额结算”将大幅缩减银行的结算义务。
It would let banks offset the payments they’re sending against the payments they’re receiving before drawing down reserves, rather than settling each payment separately.
它将允许银行在提取准备金之前将其发送的付款与收到的付款相抵消，而不是单独结算每笔付款。
But it would probably take years of study before implementing a new design of the payments system itself.
但在实施支付系统本身的新设计之前，可能需要多年的研究。
Reducing banks’ need to pre-fund any obligations can go faster, as moves to ease access to the Fed’s discount window and its backstop lending tool (the standing repo facility) are already underway .
减少银行为任何债务预先融资的需要可以更快，因为放宽美联储贴现窗口及其支持贷款工具（常备回购工具）的准入的举措已经在进行中。
Outsiders currently have little way to judge the FOMC’s progress here.
外界目前几乎无法判断联邦公开市场委员会在这方面的进展。
Fixing that requires publishing, in real time, the indicators the FOMC actually watches for reserve adequacy: the spread between short-term market rates and the rate the Fed pays on reserves, use of the standing repo facility, and the dispersion of reserves across banks.
解决这个问题需要实时发布联邦公开市场委员会实际关注的准备金充足性指标：短期市场利率与美联储支付的准备金利率之间的利差、常备回购工具的使用以及银行间准备金的分散情况。
Openly accounting for when those indicators failed to warn in time (as in September 2019) would build confidence in the effort.
公开说明这些指标何时未能及时发出警告（如 2019 年 9 月）将增强人们对这一努力的信心。
Bottom line: The Balance Sheet Task Force should recommend that the FOMC introduce reforms that reduce reserve demand before cutting reserve supply further.
底线：资产负债表工作组应建议联邦公开市场委员会在进一步削减准备金供应之前引入减少准备金需求的改革。
It should also encourage greater transparency about the real-time indicators that the FOMC monitors to judge reserve demand-supply balance.
它还应鼓励提高联邦公开市场委员会监测的判断准备金供需平衡的实时指标的透明度。
( Read our balance sheet post.
（阅读我们的资产负债表帖子。
)
）
One idea runs through all five recommendations : publish the inputs, not just the output.
一个想法贯穿所有五项建议：发布输入，而不仅仅是输出。
The skew behind the filtered inflation number.
过滤后的通货膨胀数据背后的偏差。
Each participant’s forecast behind their rate path.
每个参与者对其利率路径的预测。
The revision history behind every “star” estimate.
每个“星级”估算背后的修订历史。
The indicators supporting a reserve-adequacy judgment, and the record of when they failed to warn in time.
支持储备充足性判断的指标，以及未能及时发出警告的记录。
None of this asks the FOMC to forecast better.
所有这些都不需要联邦公开市场委员会做出更好的预测。
We doubt that’s possible.
我们怀疑这是可能的。
It asks the five task forces to promote more systematic and transparent FOMC policy, while shortening the interval between the world changing and both the FOMC and the public noticing.
它要求五个工作组推动更加系统和透明的FOMC政策，同时缩短世界变化与FOMC和公众注意到之间的间隔。