Cupid targets the Fed with early tweets

Washington: It isn't often you see the words "love", "romance", and "Federal Reserve" in the same sentence.

But on Friday, the US central bank and many economists who spend countless hours monitoring its decisions began their Valentine's Day flirtations a bit early.

It started with Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, who tweeted yesterday morning: "You're my long-run target; my nominal anchor" — with the attached hashtag, #FedValentines. In FedSpeak, what Wolfers was referring to was the Fed's inflation benchmarks.

Within minutes, some top economists in the US had chimed in with their own take on Cupid. They included Austan Goolsbee, who was previously President Barack Obama's top economist. Some of the Fed's regional arms — the San Francisco Fed, Philadelphia Fed and Atlanta Fed — weighed in.

"I am surprised by all of this," Wolfers said. "My Twitter stream is filled with geeks, nerds and policy wonks and I thought we'd have nerdy fun. It ended up far more viral than I had anticipated."

The only unofficial rule was that the tweets had to be written using the Fed's often obscure terminology. The resulting declarations ranged from pure romance to cute overtures and racier fare.

Here's a selection:

Econtourage @Econtourage:Roses are red, violets are blue. Would a Default Swap be of interest to you?

SanFranciscoFed @SFFedReserve: My love is elastic, my commitment too big to fail.

ed simons @eddychemical: I'd sacrifice my monetary autonomy just to keep my exchange rate fixed to yours.