US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the central bank’s task has shifted from a post-crisis exercise of healing the economy to one aimed at holding on to progress made.
“Before, we had to press down on the gas pedal trying to give the economy all of the oomph that we possibly could,” Yellen said on Monday in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Fed is now trying to “give it some gas, but not so much that we’re pushing down hard on the accelerator,” she said.
Yellen and her colleagues are aiming to ease back significantly this year on the level of support the central bank is providing the US economy, as they close in on their goals of full employment and 2 percent inflation.
Policymakers have penciled in two additional rate hikes this year, on top of one executed last month.
Minutes of their meeting showed that most Fed officials also expect to begin shrinking the bank’s US$4.5 trillion balance sheet later this year, gradually reversing emergency bond purchases made during the recession and recovery.
“The appropriate stance of policy now is closer to, let me call it neutral,” Yellen said in response to questions during an event at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Yellen said she expected the economy to continue to grow at a moderate pace and that gradual interest-rate increases “can get us where we need to be.”
Yellen, whose term as chair ends early next year, said it is as important to avoid moving rates too slowly as it to avoid moving too rapidly.
“We want to be ahead of the curve and not behind it,” she said. “We don’t want to be in a position where we have to raise rates rapidly, which could conceivably cause a recession.”
Yellen said unemployment, at 4.5 percent, now stands a bit below what she and many of her colleagues consider to be its lowest sustainable rate.
Inflation, she said, was still slightly below target, emphasizing her focus on the measure that excludes food and energy.
“It’s still slightly below 2 percent in my estimation,” she said.
The Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation rose to 2.1 percent in the 12 months through February, the first time it has reached the central bank’s 2 percent target in almost five years.
However, the so-called core version of that measure showed price rises have been fairly steady at between 1.6 percent and 1.8 percent for much of this year.
In about 75 minutes of questions and answers from students and Ford school dean Susan Collins, Yellen reiterated several previously stated positions.
She said demographic changes and low productivity growth are holding back the US economy, and that tougher bank supervision has made the US financial system safer, and that some proposed legislation in Congress threatens the independence of the US central bank.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six