Fed's
Yellen says met firm at heart of leak probes
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[May 05, 2015]
By Douwe Miedema and Jonathan Spicer
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen met with a research firm that later
published confidential information from the central bank, she said on
Monday.
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Yellen met with Medley Global Advisors in June 2012, she said in a
letter, months before the firm unveiled details of a September Fed
meeting a day ahead of the publication of the central bank's own
record of the discussions.
The Justice Department is investigating Medley over a possible leak
of information from the Fed.
"Nothing Medley Global Advisors reported in October ... could have
been conveyed in June, and let me assure you that, in any case, I
did not convey any confidential information," Yellen said in the
letter to two Republican members of the House of Representatives,
Jeb Hensarling and Sean Duffy.
Yellen said she would also disclose the names of other staff members
who had been in touch with the firm.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/May/05/images/ads/current/best_friends_sda_010515.png) Yellen in March said that the central bank's internal watchdog, the
office of the inspector general, was investigating the matter. She
also said that she did not know where the information had come from.
At the policy-setting meeting, Fed officials laid the groundwork for
the massive bond-buying stimulus they were to roll out later that
year. Early knowledge of that discussion could have given traders an
unfair edge.
The probe comes as politicians such as Hensarling boost pressure on
the Fed to tell the public more about its inner workings, including
its decisions about monetary policy.
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Jeb Hensarling, head of the House Financial Services Committee,
wrote to Yellen in March to express his concern about lack of
response to an earlier letter by Duffy, who heads the Subcommittee
on Oversight and Investigations.
In that letter, Hensarling said that an internal probe by the Fed's
general counsel was dropped at the request of several members of the
Federal Open Market Committee, the group that sets the central
bank's interest rate policy, and that a criminal investigation into
the matter was pending.
(Reporting by Douwe Miedema and Jonathan Spicer; editing by Andrew
Hay)
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