The US Federal Reserve should be cautious on interest rate increases due to lingering risks to the US economy, one of its most influential policymakers yesterday said, appearing to signal that the chance of a hike by the end of the year was fading.
While New York Fed President William Dudley said it was “premature” to rule out a policy tightening this year, he added that negative shocks were more likely than positive ones due to the unknown fallout from Britain’s vote to leave the EU and a strong greenback.
“All three of these reasons — evidence that US monetary policy is currently only moderately accommodative, the fact that US financial conditions have been influenced by economic and financial market developments abroad, and risk management considerations — argue, at the moment, for caution in raising US short-term interest rates,” said Dudley, a close ally of Fed Chair Janet Yellen and a permanent voter on US policy.
Photo: Reuters
The comments, including a reference to uncertainty around the Nov. 8 US election, suggested the central bank is leaning toward standing pat on rates until perhaps December — which would mark one year since it raised rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
Dudley applauded recent investor expectations for a less aggressive US tightening cycle going forward and warned that it was becoming increasingly clear that some post-crisis “headwinds” were likely to be permanent.
In an otherwise dovish speech to a joint New York Fed-Bank Indonesia conference in Bali, he said it was possible that the US economy would outperform expectations through year end, that financial conditions ease, or that other international risks fade.
“For these reasons, I think it is premature to rule out further monetary policy tightening this year,” he said in prepared remarks for the speech at a resort hotel.
If the economy and labor markets improve quickly, Dudley said, the Fed would react by raising rates sooner.
“If that all happens very quickly, I can definitely see the Fed raising interest rates even prior to the election possibly,” he said. “But if that all happens very slowly, then we’re going to go very slowly.”
Dudley was coy on just how many rate increases he envisioned, saying only that he expected the central bank to move at least more aggressively than current futures-market predictions for only one rate increase by the end of next year.
While the US central bank struck some confident tones in a policy statement last week, more recent data showing the US economy has expanded at an annual rate of roughly 1 percent so far this year emboldened those who think the Fed would not tighten monetary policy any time soon.
A Reuters poll of economists recently pointed to the December policy meeting as the most for an interest rate increase.
However, after weak US growth data on Friday, Fed funds rate futures are pricing in only about 30 percent chance of a rate hike by December, compared with about 50 percent early last week.
Dudley called the recent US GDP reading of 1.2 percent annualized growth for the second quarter as “sluggish,” but stuck to his expectation that the economy would rebound to about 2 percent growth over the next 18 months, an outlook he described as “positive” and “satisfactory.”
He also said he was confident inflation would rise to the Fed’s 2 percent goal in the medium term.
Dudley added that aggressive monetary easing in Japan and Europe this year boosted the US dollar and, together, helped convince the Fed it could not raise rates as aggressively as it imagined in December last year.
He said productivity in the US and around the world was “quite disappointing,” but it was up to governments and legislatures to construct the necessary reforms to make their economies more efficient.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure