UPDATE 1-Fed's Poole: too much transparency clouds message

ST. LOUIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - St. Louis Federal Reserve President William Poole on Friday said that it was possible to be too transparent when trying to communicate with the public.

"Transparency can really interfere with sending the message," Poole told a conference hosted by the St Louis Fed.

"Everything that we do and say is going to be read by the market as having something to do with (our) price-setter responsibility (as) the central bank," he said.

"You have to explain what the message is, why you are doing it, what do you want people to conclude from it. You just don't just throw a whole (out a) bunch of raw data," he said. "That does not create genuine communication."

Poole, a voting member of the Fed's interest rate-setting committee this year, was speaking at a monetary policy conference in his honor before his retirement in March.

"You might ask if it would be more useful to release (the Fed's forecast) on a quarterly basis, or a monthly basis, or every FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting, and you might come to a judgment that some interval more often than semi-annual might be worthwhile," he said.

He stressed that if that were the case, it should be done in the context of explaining the central bank's message.

The Fed is currently reviewing how it communicates with the public, including whether this task would be aided by adopting an explicit numerical inflation target, something that Poole has long ardently advocated.