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By Ann Saphir and Jonathan Spicer
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal Reserve policymakers this week are set to continue paring their massive bond-buying stimulus, but below the smooth surface of a likely unanimous vote lies a deeply divided Fed struggling to lay the groundwork for more difficult decisions ahead.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen hinted at the U.S. central bank's broad agenda a couple weeks ago when she laid out three "big" issues officials need to track: the level of slack in the labor market, whether inflation is rising back toward the Fed's 2 percent goal, and the factors that could derail the economic recovery.
Unexpected "twists and turns," she said, could force the Fed to diverge from its highly telegraphed plan to end asset purchases later this year and raise interest rates in 2015.
Yellen and her colleagues are debating what economic conditions would set the stage for a rate hike, whether the Fed should start letting its balance sheet shrink before or after it acts to push up borrowing costs, and whether it should respond to the possibility of asset bubbles in some markets.
Fed officials, who will meet on Tuesday and Wednesday, disagree sharply on the answers to these questions, and consequently on the best longer-term plan for rate rises. But unlike their counterparts at the European Central Bank, who face a threat of deflation, U.S. central bankers are under little pressure to pivot quickly on policy.
"We doubt any major change will emerge" in the Fed's policy statement, said Annalisa Piazza, fixed income strategist at Newedge. The statement, to be released at 2 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Wednesday, at the close of the meeting, will not be accompanied by new economic forecasts or a news conference, events that are only scheduled quarterly.
Recent data has largely borne out the Fed's presumption that a mid-winter slowdown in the economy was due to unusually severe weather. In addition, with bond yields down and stock prices up since the Fed began tapering its asset purchases in January, market conditions are not threatening to undercut the economy's momentum.
The relative stability makes it an easy call for the Fed to trim its monthly bond buying by $10 billion for a fourth consecutive meeting. This would take the purchases down to $45 billion and put the Fed about halfway along its plan to end the quantitative easing program by late this year.
And because officials completed a much-needed revamp of a low-rate promise last month, they can now take the time to dig into the longer-term strategy that will guide them when they finally begin raising rates.
At the last policy meeting in March, all but one official backed a new pledge to keep rates near zero for a "considerable time" after the bond-buying ends. The lone dissenter, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, has already signaled he will not continue to dissent.
Since then, a handful of officials have suggested the Fed should be more specific about when rates will rise. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren has floated the idea of keeping rates near zero until the economy is within one year of reaching full employment and 2 percent inflation.
Richard Fisher, who heads the Dallas Fed, panned the idea. "It is a matter of feel," he told reporters in Austin earlier this month. "I don't think you can put a specific time frame on it. And I wish we could, but I don't think that would be responsible monetary policy."
Another question policymakers need to answer in coming months is whether a test facility for conducting reverse repurchase agreements, which temporarily drain cash from the financial system and could help control market rates when the Fed tightens monetary policy, will be adopted as a key tool.
The relatively quiet bond market "allows the Fed to reflect on big-picture themes," said Thomas Costerg, economist at Standard Chartered Bank. "There is mounting pressure to clarify the exit strategy and the role of some liquidity facilities, although it is unlikely that the Fed will decide this now."
(Additional reporting by Richard Leong in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)


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Suspect in Tiller's death supported killing abortion providers, friends say
The suspect in custody for the slaying of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion.
Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., a Kansas City suburb, was arrested on Interstate 35 near Gardner in suburban Johnson County, Kan., about three hours after the shooting. Tiller was shot to death around 10 a.m. inside Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.
In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. On the rear of his car was a Christian fish symbol with the word "Jesus" inside.
Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.
"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."
Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.
"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then he (Roeder) said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you're doing.'^"
Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.
"I met him once, and he wrote to me a few times," Leach said. "I remember that he was sympathetic to our cause, but I don't remember any details."
Leach said he met Roeder in Topeka when he went there to visit Shelley Shannon, who was in prison for the 1993 shooting of Tiller.
"He told me about a lot of conspiracy stuff and showed me how to take the magnetic strip out of a five-dollar bill," Leach said. "He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money."
Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the "Freemen" movement.
"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.
In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.
Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.
"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time, ``but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely enough there to kill somebody.''
Roeder, who then lived in Silver Lake, Kan., was stopped because he had an improper license plate that read "Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American.'' Authorities said the plate was typical of those used by Freemen.
Roeder was arraigned on one count of criminal use of explosives and misdemeanor charges of driving on a suspended license, failure to carry a Kansas registration and failure to carry liability insurance.
He was found guilty and sentenced in June 1996 to 24 months of probation with intensive supervision and ordered to dissociate himself from anti-government groups that advocated violence.
But in December 1997, his probation ended six months early when the Kansas Court of Appeals overturned his conviction. The court held that evidence against Roeder was seized by authorities during an illegal search of his car.
Morris Wilson, commander of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, said he knew Roeder fairly well.
"I'd say he's a good ol' boy except he was just so fanatic about abortion," said Wilson, who now lives in western Nebraska. "He was always talking about how awful abortion was. But there's a lot of people who think abortion is awful."
Suzanne James, former director of victim's services for Shawnee County, said she remembered Roeder.
"He was part of the One Supreme Court, a Freemen group based out of Shawnee County," James said. "He was fanatic about a lot of things. I went to one of his court appearances and thought, 'This guy is dangerous.' There were a lot of red flags that came up about him."
In recent years, someone using the name Scott Roeder has posted anti-Tiller comments on various Internet sites. One post, dated Sept. 3, 2007 and placed on a site sponsored by Operation Rescue called chargetiller.com, said that Tiller needed to be "stopped."
"It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the 'lawlessness' which is spoken of in the Bible," it said. "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation."
On May 19, 2007, a Scott Roeder commented on an invitation by Operation Rescue to join an event being held May 17-20 in Wichita, "the 'Nation's Abortion Capital,' to pray for an end to George R. Tiller's late-term abortion business and for all pre-born babies everywhere to once again come under the protection of law."
The post said: "Bless everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp. Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn't seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller."

subset: commoncrawl


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White Mage, Red Mage, Black Mage, what's the difference? In Dorkly's latest video we discover that not every White Mage is as enlightened as the next.
Yes, 'old-fashioned' is indeed a polite way of saying 'racist'. As time progresses we'll have to eventually replace 'old-fashioned' with 'archaic' or 'anachronistic', though the latter would surely upset the fine people at the Society for Creative Anachronism. They can handle it. They're creative.
Every time I see an animated Final Fantasy video like this it just makes me mourn Brian Clevinger's 8-Bit Theater even more. I still act out his strips on my arms on a daily basis.