U.S. Has Overhang of Capital Goods

Chris Kromm ckromm at mindspring.com
Wed Feb 14 17:09:42 PST 2001


Wednesday February 14 2:07 PM ET U.S. Has Overhang of Capital Goods

NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) - The United States has an oversupply of capital goods that will take an indefinite period to work off before investment picks up again, Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Vice-Chairman Roger Ferguson said on Wednesday.

``Over the last few months, data on orders and shipments of nondefense capital goods have provided hard evidence on a slowdown in business spending on high-tech capital goods,'' Ferguson said in prepared remarks for delivery at Vanderbilt University.

``Our economy is clearly undergoing a stock adjustment to bring the supply and demand for capital goods in some sectors into better alignment,'' he said, but it was unclear how long it would take to complete the rebalancing.

Ferguson touched briefly on the issue of stock values, saying it was impossible for economic policymakers to decide whether current price levels were fair or not.

``As a result, I believe that it would be unwise -- and indeed impossible -- for the Federal Reserve to target specific levels of valuations in equity markets,'' Ferguson said.



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