The Financial Times' David Bowen is a Central Bank Website Junkie

Subtleties and hilarities of central banks

By David Bowen

Published: September 3 2007 10:50 | Last updated: September 3 2007 10:50

Visitor numbers to central bank sites must have been breaking records this month. Both professionals and the “interested punter” will have wanted to see what the Fed and its equivalents round the world have been saying and doing about the tremors running through the financial world.

One of my dark secrets – not a great chat-up line – is that I find central bank websites extraordinarily interesting. First, almost every country has one, which means I can wander around the world seeing how essentially the same job is being done in Tajikistan (www.nbt.tj), Tonga (www.reservebank.to) and Thailand (www.bot.or.th). The Bank for International Settlements, the central banks’ central bank, lists 163 central bank links on its own excellent site (www.bis.org), and that’s without including all 13 banks the greedy old US has.

Second, as I have said, central banks are trying to serve two very different markets - professional and public – which is like to trying to combine an academic journal and a popular newspaper into one publication. The core market is made up of specialists in the markets, governments, academia and the like; they want announcements, speeches briefings and publications, and also vast quantities of data. But as publicly owned institutions central banks (or most or them) also feel a duty to explain the financial and banking system to their owners: us. This month more of both groups, I would guess, have been visiting the Fed and its equivalents around the world. They will have found that some central banks manage to serve everyone with panache; others (too many) do not.

Unfortunately one of the less successful efforts is the US Federal Reserve site (www.federalreserve.gov), which is a bit of a mess. “Breaking news” is a dramatic heading that is quickly undermined by headlines such as “Approval of proposal by The State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine”. These are simply the latest press releases – hardly “breaking news”. One headline is related to the crisis - “FOMC statement”’ – would be recognised by professionals, but would mean little to the passer-by.

Am I being harsh? After all, the Fed has to be incredibly careful what it says, and how it says it. I don’t think so. Look at some of site belonging to some of the other banks in the Federal Reserve System, and you will find much clearer approach. The St Louis Fed home page (www.stlouisfed.org) provides a headline that actually says something (”FOMC: Ready to mitigate effects of financial disruption”) as well as a summary of two relevant releases. In other words, it uses simple editorial techniques to shed light on the obscure.

Inside, many pages on the Fed site appear to have no navigational links – unless you scroll right down to the bottom and find a small and varying selection. This is breaking the first rule of navigation:[Click to read on.]