Fed officials signal more rate hikes likely amid sticky inflation, minutes show

video

Federal Reserve pushing back ‘too much’ on wages: Jeremy Siegel

The Wharton School emeritus professor of finance Jeremy Siegel joins ‘Barron’s Roundtable’ to provide his outlook for the economy and markets, and discusses the Federal Reserve’s handling of inflation, rate hikes, wages, and the job market.

Federal Reserve officials signaled at their most recent meeting that additional interest rate hikes are necessary this year to bring inflation down to their 2% target, although many supported a slower pace of increases. 

Minutes from the U.S. central bank's Jan. 31-Feb. 1 meeting released on Wednesday showed that a number of policymakers are worried an "insufficiently restrictive" policy stance could "halt recent progress in moderating inflationary pressures" and keep consumer prices elevated for a longer period.

"Participants observed that a restrictive policy stance would need to be maintained until the incoming data provided confidence that inflation was on a sustained downward path to 2%, which was likely to take some time," the meeting minutes said.

US ECONOMY COULD SEE 'SECOND CHAPTER' IN PANDEMIC PRICE SURGE

Officials voted at the meeting to raise the benchmark interest rate a quarter percentage point to a range of 4.5% to 4.75% and signaled that a "couple more" increases are on the table this year. That followed a half-point increase at their December meeting, and four consecutive 75-basis-point moves before that. 

The move was unanimous, and "almost all participants" agreed that it was appropriate to raise rates by a quarter point in order to better assess the economic impact of such rapid tightening. But "a few" policymakers favored a bigger 50-basis-point hike. 

INFLATION STILL OUTSTRIPPING WAGES IN MOST US CITIES

"The participants favoring a 50-basis-point increase noted that a larger increase would more quickly bring the target range close to the levels they believed would achieve a sufficiently restrictive stance," the minutes said.

Stocks fell after the minutes pointed to a Fed that is determined to crush runaway inflation, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 137 points.

Markets widely expect the Fed to continue raising rates at a quarter-point pace, but a slew of hotter-than-expected economic data reports in recent weeks, including the blowout January jobs report and a disappointing inflation report that pointed to the pervasiveness of high consumer prices, has raised the specter of a higher peak rate or steeper increases. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell (Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images / File / Getty Images)

The Labor Department reported last week that the consumer price index rose 0.5% in January, the most in three months. The annual inflation rate also surprised to the upside at 6.4%. 

That data has prompted some traders to reexamine their rate hike expectations for the year, with a growing number of investors now betting the Fed could raise rates by higher than previously projected. About 58% of traders expect the Fed to increase the federal funds rate by another 75 basis points, while 17% expect rates to increase by a full percentage point, according to data from the CME Group's FedWatch tool. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Fed officials have acknowledged that rates may need to go higher than expected and remain elevated for longer. 

"My overall judgment is it will be a long battle against inflation, and we’ll probably have to continue to show inflation-fighting resolve as we go through 2023," St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said last week. "I wouldn’t rule anything out for that meeting, or any meeting in the future."

Source: Read Full Article