FED DATA SUGGEST STABLE U.S. MONETARY POLICY Latest Federal Reserve data suggest that the central bank voted to maintain the existing degree of pressure on banking reserves at its regular policy-making meeting two weeks ago, money market economists said. "The numbers were a little disappointing, but I think we can take Mr Volcker at his word when he said that nothing had changed," said Bob Bannon of Security Pacific National Bank. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker told a Congressional committee last Thursday that the Fed's policy "has been unchanged up to today." Although Volcker's statement last Thursday allayed most fears that the Fed had marginally tightened its grip on reserves to help an ailing dollar, many economists still wanted confirmation of a steady policy in today's data, which covered the two-week bank statement period ended yesterday. This need for additional reassurance was made all the more acute by the Fed's decision yesterday to drain reserves from the banking system by arranging overnight matched sale-purchase agreements for the first time since April of last year, economists added. Today's data showed that the draining action was for a fairly large 3.9 billion dlrs, economists said. "The one thing that caught my eye were the relatively sizeable matched sales on Wednesday," said Dana Johnson of First National Bank of Chicago. "But there was a clearly justified need for them. There was nothing ominous." "The Fed couldn't have waited until the start of the new statement period today. If it had, it would have missed its (reserve) projections," added Security Pacific's Bannon. A Fed spokesman told reporters that there were no large single-day net miss in reserve projections in the latest week. Economists similarly shrugged off slightly higher-than- expected adjusted bank borrowings from the Fed's discount window, which averaged 310 mln dlrs a day in the latest week, compared with many economists' forecasts of about 200 mln. For the two-week bank statement period as a whole, the daily borrowing average more than doubled to 381 mln dlrs from 160 in the prior period. "There were wire problems at two large banks on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I am not too bothered about the borrowings," said Scott Winningham of J.S. Winningham and Co. The Wednesday average rose to 946 mln dlrs from 148 mln a week earlier. Lending further support to the stable policy view was a relatively steady federal funds rate of about six pct in the latest week and persistently high levels of excess reserves in the banking system, economists said. "For the time being, the Fed is following a neutral path, with fed funds at about six to 6-1/8 pct," said Darwin Beck of First Boston Corp. "I expect it to continue in that vein." "Excess reserves fell but they are still over a billion dlrs," added First Chicago's Johnson. Banks' excess reserves averaged 1.03 billion dlrs a day in the latest statement period, down from 1.50 billion in the previous one. After the Fed declined to assign a 1987 target growth range to the wayward M-1 money supply measure last week, little attention was paid to a steeper-than-anticipated 2.1 billion dlr jump in the week ended February 16. Looking ahead, economists said the Fed will have to tread a fine line between the dollar's progress in the international currency markets and the development of the domestic economy. "The market has perhaps exaggerated the dollar's effect on Fed policy," said First Chicago's Johnson. "Of course, it will take the dollar into account in future policy decisions but if the economy is weak, it won't pull back from easing."