Talk:Fedspeak/Archive 1

Perhaps I'm turning into a gnome, but ...
I had no difficulty understanding the quotation of Mr. Greenspan in the section "Examples". It not only is easy to understand, it was a cogent point about risk that was dramatically demonstrated shorty afterwards when the "GFC" struck. Can't we find something a bit more delphic? I went through the list at http://www.dallasfed.org/news/speeches/greenspeak.html and found them mainly quite straightforward! I think this may be the hardest one:
 * ''"The members of the Board of Governors and the Reserve Bank presidents foresee an implicit strengthening of activity after the current rebalancing is over, although the central tendency of their individual forecasts for real GDP still shows a substantial slowdown, on balance, for the year as a whole."
 * —February 13, 2001''

--202.63.39.58 (talk) 11:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I've added the suggested quote in. Cheers.Smallman12q (talk) 01:45, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Irrational Exuberance
Why would an administrator revert my addition of the "irrational exuberance" quote .... it took me time to format that and get the link to work and indents to make it look nice like the other quotes. The quote is accurate with umpteen sources, and the provenance is non-controversial. Greenspan and Shiller discuss it in both their books. Can't he just help make Wikipedia better by improving links and citations rather than brute-force removal?

I think any article on Fedspeak/Greenspeak is missing perhaps his most famous quote. The problem I see is that all the Dallas Fed links are broken and I'm certain that quote was in there so it is Fedspeak but I can't find it. I did see some 3rd reference to it being in there. If we want to argue whether it is a good example of Fedspeak we can talk about it perhaps as a counter example where he was uncharacteristically clear and that rattled markets. But I still think it is Fedspeak because plainspeak would use the terms "bubble" or "crazy". He is asked about it regularly and talks about it at length and has never disowned or backed away from it. So I don't see the controversy here.

If nobody can find the Dallas Fed article do we have to remove all the examples? The examples are the best part. I don't get it.


 * You might want to read WP:AGF and accept that I might actually have had a reason. Most of what you have written above suggests that we should be adding our own opinions to the article, determining what is Fedspeak or Greenspeak ourselves. That's against both WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY. Dougweller (talk) 08:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Again I don't know where you see anything where I state my opinion matters at all. We are talking about a dictionary definition of a colloquial term in culture that is constantly shifting and acquiring different meanings. All you can do is find various examples and other peoples opinions of what it means and what are good or bad examples. There is no verifiable fact here what Fedspeak means or whether it is a valid linguistic term. I'm not a linguist or expert in the cultural spread of language but I would sure welcome their opinion and contribution to the article (opinion used intentionally here). The definition of OR is not very clear when it comes to this sort of thing, I read the page. After all, all we are doing iquoting other opinions who is to say they are right? Does Greenspan's opinion on the definition count? Not really, since he is one guy and this is a cultural phenomena. He can say how he practiced it, but not how others choose to find meaning in the term. But he did discuss both Fedspeak and Greenspeak in the interview I dug up and cited and I tried to use those ideas. By definition the whole thing is unverifiable. The example given on OR page is "Paris is in France". You don't have to attribute that since it is attributable, but the point is it is verifiable because you can go to France and find Paris. Word meanings aren't really verifiable for this kind of colloquial term. If you want to delete the whole article because of this go ahead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenbe (talk • contribs) 22:26, 4 September 2014 (UTC)