Tag: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell

Commentary: Could the Baby Boomer Retirement Wave and Labor Shortages Absorb the Recession?

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The national unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 percent in July, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, once again hitting more than 50-year lows.

It’s still peak employment as far as the eye can see. Even with the past two years’ high inflation dropping dramatically and disinflation usually correlating with higher unemployment and a recession, that simply has not occurred yet, despite all the warning signs typically associated with an economic slowdown or downturn.

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Commentary: The Fed’s Interest Rate Hikes Have only Destroyed $398 Billion of the $6 Trillion It Printed

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“Our expectation has been we would begin to see inflation come down, largely because of supply side healing.  We haven’t. We have seen some supply side healing but inflation has not really come down.”

That was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Sept. 21, speaking to reporters following the central bank’s meeting where the Federal Funds Rate was once again increased 0.75 percent to its current range of 3 percent to 3.25 percent in a bid to combat sticky 8.3 percent consumer inflation the past year.

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Inflation Soars to Highest Level Since 1982

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The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.5% in December, bringing the key inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 7%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.

The CPI soared to 7% on a year-over-year basis in December, the highest level in almost four decades, the BLS reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal projected the index would soar past 7.1% in December.

“There’s still a lot of scarcity in the economy. Consumers and businesses are in great financial shape, and they’re willing to pay up for more goods, more services and more labor,” Sarah House, director, and senior economist at Wells Fargo, told the WSJ.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Powell Says Inflation Poses ‘Severe’ Threat to Job Market

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged Tuesday that high inflation is indeed a serious threat to the U.S. central bank’s goal of helping to get U.S. employees back to work.

He also said the Fed will raise rates higher than initially planned if needed to slow rising prices, according to the Associated Press.

“If we have to raise interest rates more over time, we will,” Powell told the Senate Banking Committee, which is considering his nomination for a second four-year term, the wire service also reports. “High inflation is a severe threat to the achievement of maximum employment.”

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Fed to Keep Providing Aid and Sees No Rate Hike Through 2022

The Associated Press

Confronted with an economy gripped by recession and high unemployment, the Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it expects to keep its key short-term interest rate near zero through 2022.

At the same time, the Fed said it will keep buying about $120 billion in Treasury and mortgage bonds each month to maintain low longer-term borrowing rates in an effort to spur spending and growth.

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The Fed Finally Begins Rolling Back its Portfolio

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by Robert Romano     The Federal Reserve has dumped an eye-popping $343 billion of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities since it began its policy normalization program in Sept. 2017. $116 billion of that, or more than a third, has been since Sept. 2018 as the nation’s central bank has begun to accelerate its program. At the same time, the Fed has been hiking the effective federal funds rate, increasing the costs of borrowing by financial institutions. Now, the effective rate stands at 2.2 percent. The pertinent question might be what took it so long? After keeping rates near-zero for the entire Obama administration, and holding onto its dragon’s horde of treasuries and other securities for almost a decade, suddenly the Fed has finally begun unwinding its portfolio—long after economic conditions had settled down after the financial crisis. The high-water mark was reached at the end of 2014, when its holdings were as high as almost $4.3 trillion. It had been a massive $3.5 trillion expansion of its balance sheet going back to Aug. 2007 when the crisis began. Arguably, the Fed has waited until nearly the end of the business cycle to begin unwinding — that is the period…

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