–More Uncertainty And Ready to ‘Act as Appropriate’
By Denny Gulino
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell Wednesday carefully refrained from promising rate cuts while suggesting they have more support amid increased uncertainty about growth, inflation and international developments – all in the context of a well behaving economy.
“We are quite mindful of the risks to the outlook and are prepared to move and use our tools as needed to sustain the expansion,” Powell said.
Striking “patience” from the latest policy statement removed what was a considered a promise there would be no change at the subsequent meeting. Now the odds of a July meeting rate cut are 100%, according to the CME Fedwatch indicator.
Facing market expectations for rate cuts, the Federal Open Market Committee held fast though one member, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, backed up his frequently expressed sentiment for more accommodation with a dissent in favor of a quarter-point rate cut.
Powell indicated in his post-meeting press conference he has no problem with any carefully considered dissent though he said the FOMC statement was “quite broad” and so encompassed a consensus that looked more favorably on rate cuts. Yet “there was not much support for cutting rates now.”
Powell acknowledged Bullard’s colleagues on the committee saw a stronger case for cuts, just not yet. He said Fed policymakers are instead intent on reacting to sustained trends, not to passing concerns that could turn around with stronger data or developments, positive or negative, on the trade front.
While trade turmoil has been an “important driver” of sentiment, Powell said, there is also separate concern about growth prospects and a “sustained shortfall in inflation.”
Powell answered the obligatory question about President Donald Trump’s reported query about the possibility of imposing a demotion and choosing another chairman by saying, “The law is clear,” that he has a four-year term which he said “I fully intend” to serve in its entirety.
The Fed chairman returned to a past topic, about how concerned he is to achieve the 2% inflation objective. He echoed the policy statement in saying that inflation “breakevens” have dropped which means a “more prolonged” period of undershooting the target.
He dismissed the suggestion, that came up at the two-day Chicago Fed conference two weeks ago, that the inflation target might be raised to 4%. A target that high would lack credibility, he said, given the difficulty the Fed and some other central banks have had reaching 2%.
The most impressive part of that conference, Powell said, were the two presentations from low and moderate income communities that demonstrated how much they rely on a continuing economic expansion.
The quarterly “dot plot” also released Wednesday, reflecting the participants’ views of what now appears most likely, averaged out to a 2019 without a change in rates and a 2020 that has the rate outlook lowered by half a point. Powell acknowledged this was the first dot plot to envisage rate cuts and again cautioned that does not amount to a forecast, just a snapshot of current probabilities.
The central tendency of participants is for an annual growth rate of 2% to 2.2%, he said, with net exports and inventories not seen as the ongoing source of strength they were in the first quarter. “The more reliable drivers of growth in the economy are spending on consumption and business investment,” he said, with consumption now having “bounced back and is now running at a solid pace.” However growth in business investment has slowed. “ The risks to a favorable income “have risen.”
Powell opened his news conference by saying, “Cross currents have reemerged,” that business confidence is down in some surveys and the question is whether those uncertainties will continue “to weigh on the outlook.”
Wages are going up, only at a rate that does little to push inflation higher, Powell said. Yet the increase in wages may be as much as can be hoped for since it’s “very consistent” with both the weak growth in productivity and the rate of inflation.
Markets had a subdued reaction to the day’s Fed developments, with the Dow industrials that had been close to flat before the 2 p.m. announcement and 2:30 p.m. Powell news conference ending up just about 38 points. Tuesday’s Dow, however, had shown 10 times that gain.
In the credit markets, there was a more discernible reaction with the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield moving closer to 2%, at 2.028% late in the day, down 0.029 point.