The other week a little blip came across my news feed and I forgot to follow up on it, but just thought about it last night. I haven't seen anyone talk about it so I figured I would mention it.
On October 2nd the New York Fed announced that it would cease to publish foreign exchange rates. This will begin in the end of 2008. They decided to do this "given the availability of alternative market-based sources for these rates".
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it always bothers me when the government ceases to publish information that it has published for years. It just strikes me as strange. Once M3 stopped being published how quickly it grew, so I have no reason but to question any motives in not publishing foreign exchange rates. While it is true that this data is readily available, it makes me wonder why they wouldn't wish to share this information source. One reason could be that they may expect to be a very active participant in the market. Therefore publishing the rates could be somewhat of a conflict of interest, but Central Banks are notorious for intervention and this would be nothing new. One could be simply to price the average person out of the market. If the data is owned by the exchanges and the banks and brokers, then they could either not choose to release it or they could charge a high price for such information. The average person would not be privy to such "proprietary data" and possibly would not know how much his dollar was being depreciated.
It may be nothing at all, but it strikes me as an interesting news item at a time when the world is essentially striking against the dollar, and the Fed is losing control over the currency. We will see how this pans out, and if anyone has any insight, I would appreciate it greatly.
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