Alan Greenspan, the speaker at Thursday night’s Minnesota Meeting, is a past master Fed-Speak, a language in which many complex words are used to say as little as possible.
Indeed, he frequently acknowledges this skill. He once told a congressman, “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.”
On another occasion he said “I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
His speech here focused on the effects of trade and technology. He avoided interest rates, monetary policy and stock market levels. Therefore the chairman didn’t need to be a circumlocutious as he usually is.
But old habits die hard, and some parts of his speech still needed translation for the average person. Here are some translations of selected passages from his remarks:
Greenspan: “Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, there has been an inexorable drive to leverage physical brawn and material resources into ever-greater value added or output”
Translation: Since the Industrial Revolution began, people have made machines to produce more things.
Greenspan: “Aggregate value added by the farm sector in this country has more than tripled in real terms over the past half century.”
Translation: Farmers produce three times more total output than 50 years ago.
Greenspan: “Doubtless it has been the advent in recent decades of the synergies of the microprocessor, lasers and fiber optics that has fostered a distinct quickening in the displacement of physical weight of output with concepts.”
Translation: Combining computers, lasers and fiber optics sped up the process of ideas replacing “things” in importance.
Greenspan: “The adjustment trauma has also distressed those who once thrived in companies that were once on the cutting edge of technology.”
Translation: A lot of people who thought their jobs at IBM were safe lost them.
Greenspan: “The adjustment process is wrenching to an existing workforce.”
Translation: It hurts to get laid off.
Greenspan: “Anti-dumping duties are levied when foreign average prices are below the average cost of production. But that also describes a practice that often emerges as a wholly appropriate response to a softening in demand.”
Translation: Anti-dumping taxes are charged when foreign goods are sold for less than it cost to produce them. But when times are bad, it can make good business sense to sell a product for whatever you can
© 1999 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.