souljourner/fomc-statements-minutes-scraper

A convenient class for scraping all the existing FOMC meeting statements

FOMC-Statements-Minutes-Scraper

A convenient Python 3.5 class for scraping all the existing FOMC meeting statements.

This class by default uses 10 threads to speed up the scraping time.

Output by default is a Pandas Dataframe. Also has the option to write to disk a pickled Pandas Dataframe.

Author: souljourner (John Zhu)

EXAMPLE USAGE

From bash:

$ python fomc.py

This creates a pickled Pandas Dataframe of the meeting minutes with the dates as the index.

From Python:

from FOMC import FOMC
fomc = FOMC()

# get the meeting statements back as a Pandas Dataframe
df = fomc.get_statements()

# write the dataframe as a pickle file
fomc.pickle("./df_minutes.pickle")

Parameters:

Parameters are passed into FOMC() init:

All parameters are optional

fomc = FOMC(base_url='https://www.federalreserve.gov', 
            calendar_url='https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm',
            historical_date=2011,
            verbose=True,
            max_threads=10)

base_url: FOMC website base URL

calendar_url: URL of where the current meetings are listed

historical_date: year (int) where it is considered historical. At this time of writing, 2011 was in the historical archive rather than in the current list.

verbose: if set to False, will not print any output during scraping

max_threads: the number of threads to use for web scraping

fomc-statements-minutes-scraper's Issues

Some statements are not well retrieves into the dataframe.

Some statements are not well retrieves into the dataframe.
For example the FOMC statement from 2014-12-17 from FED: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20141217a.htm

is different of the value into the dataframe:

_Chairman Alan Greenspan announced today that the Federal Open Market Committee decided to increase slightly the degree of pressure on reserve positions. The action is expected to be associated with a small increase in short-term money market interest rates.

The decision was taken to move toward a less accommodative stance in monetary policy in order to sustain and enhance the economic expansion.

Chairman Greenspan decided to announce this action immediately so as to avoid any misunderstanding of the Committee's purposes, given the fact that this is the first firming of reserve market conditions by the Committee since early 1989.__