The recently retired chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, is renowned for his ability to speak on policy issues without saying anything that would pin down the Fed's ability to alter the course of monetary policy. As adept as Dr. Greenspan is at this art, he is not, perhaps, the best the FR System has ever seen. As Exhibit A, I quote from an internal letter sent by Governor George Talley of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in 1930 (as recorded in Elmus Wicker, _Federal Reserve Monetary Policy, 1917-1933_, p. 156. Directors were not impressed with the arguments which you presented ... they are unwilling to interpose direct action in a period of reaction to a previous period of action that perhaps, shall I say, was not courageous enough or did not go far enough in its preventive attributes. The thought is simply this - that a direct effort toward ease on the part of the System should not through artificial means transcend the force of the reaction measured by the forces of action at the high point of the force of action in the opposite circumstances ... We also think that it [N.Y.] should assume responsibility for what it does not do as well as what it does undertake, and that it should have the fortitude to meet a period of reaction and go through an era of readjustment patiently and calmly, acting in accordance with conditions as they are found, instead of undertaking to make conditions as they are desired, with the result of shaking their congestion out on the country. Got that? Neil T. Skaggs