“You can’t expect the Fed to spell out what it’s going to do,” Mr. Fischer said. “Why? Because it doesn’t know.”
He added: “We don’t know what we’ll be doing a year from now. It’s a mistake to try and get too precise.”
It seems to me that this throws both Scott Sumner and John Taylor under the bus. Instead, Fischer seems to be implying that the Fed needs to engage in fine tuning, using indicators that are too arcane to describe to the public.
By the way, Sylvester Eijffinger and Edin Mugajic think that the “new tools” of monetary policy will be used as far as the eye can see.
Given that other central banks will also proceed cautiously, “textbook” monetary policy will probably not be the norm again until at least 2020. Even then, central bankers would continue to view expansionary monetary policy as a viable strategy to cope with deteriorating economic conditions in the future. Against this background, the term “unconventional” does not apply to ZIRP and QE.