Head of the UK’s Financial Services Authority

GE CEO

One year to go

This year’s Wimbledon Championships had a lot of interesting stories. On the men's side it was all about the top 4 players in the world. On the ladies it was about Sharapova, the Williams sisters, and whether or not any of the young pretenders could win the Championships.

All of the top 4 cruised into the men’s quarter-finals. Only Rafael Nadal was a bit of a worry hurting his foot against Juan Del Potro in the first set. After the match he said he would have to take painkillers for the rest of the tournament and possibly miss the next 6 weeks after Wimbledon finished. This brought hope that possibly Andy Murray could beat Nadal if they both reached the semi-finals which they both did easily. Expectations were reaching fever pitch now with a real belief Murray could make the finals.

UK Labour Party leader

UK Labour Party leader

Back in April when we created a word cloud of what Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in his first post-rate decision press conference we noted that the word “inflation” loomed much larger than did any mention of unemployment or jobs.

Today, eight weeks later, Bernanke went in front of the press again, and judging by our new analysis he had a lot more to say about unemployment than he did back in the spring. Take a look below.

We’ve created a word cloud of the minutes of the April 26-27 FOMC meeting to try to divine what’s foremost in the mind of Fed members. Words used more often in the minutes translate into larger words within the cloud. As you can see below, inflation was by far the most used word in the minutes, however there’s a new word competing for top billing – “rate.”

This fits in with news that that most Federal Reserve officials would prefer to raise benchmark interest rates before selling assets when the time comes to tighten policy. Evidence that the Fed is indeed discussing exit strategy can be found in the fact that the word “sales” also crops up in the new cloud, although it’s not as large as the word rate.

We’ve created a quick and dirty word cloud of what Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in his historic press conference this afternoon. Words he used more often are larger than less-used words. For bonus points try to find the word “jobs” in there:

Update: Looks like Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein took note of our our cloud. Thanks for the links guys  - we’re glad to help out anytime!