Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was an advocate for interest rate hikes last year. According to Waller, \u2018Too soon to tell\u2019 if economy will cool or prices heat up. The Federal Reserve needs to \u201cwait, watch and see\u201d how the economy evolves before making any interest-rate moves, said Fed Governor Christopher Waller on Wednesday.
Although he didn\u2019t say so specifically, Waller\u2019s comments, in a speech in London, suggest he is in favor of holding interest rates steady at the central bank\u2019s next policy meeting in two weeks.
Fed officials will stop talking to the media on Friday in order to prepare for their interest-rate decision on November 1st. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will give his views on the outlook Thursday before the communication blackout starts. The Fed has rapidly raised its benchmark interest rate to a range of 5.25%-5.5% over the past 19 months to quell inflation after holding it close to zero during the pandemic.
The US central bank earlier forecast has one more 25 basis point hike this year. Traders in derivative markets think a hike at the Fed\u2019s December meeting is more likely than after the closed-door discussions in two weeks. In his remarks in London, Waller said there are two possible scenarios that could develop in the next few months.
In the first case, the economy slows, thus allowing inflation to cool, and the Fed is able to hold rates steady. In the second, the economy continues to power ahead and the Fed will have to hike rates further to ensure inflation comes back down to the 2% target. \u201cAs of today, it is too soon to tell\u201d whether the economy cools or inflation heats up, Waller said.
Waller noted that financial conditions have tightened \u201cconsiderably\u201d since July as the 10-year Treasury note yield has risen by about 90 basis points. This may impact spending by consumers.
\u201cOf course, I have been waiting a while for tightening financial conditions to cause a significant slowing of spending, and I have been consistently surprised at the resilience of consumer spending. So I will be patient in waiting for the data to document how spending evolves,\u201d Waller said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was an advocate for interest rate hikes last year. According to Waller, \u2018Too soon to tell\u2019 if economy will cool or prices heat up. The Federal Reserve needs to \u201cwait, watch and see\u201d how the economy evolves before making any interest-rate moves, said Fed Governor Christopher Waller on Wednesday.Although he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":53410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,36],"tags":[8094,7172,6885,6987,8143,7163,8496,6858],"class_list":["post-91073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-forex-markets","category-market-updates","tag-christopher-waller","tag-consumer-spending","tag-fed","tag-inflation","tag-interest-rate-hikes","tag-jerome-powell","tag-tightening-monetary-policy","tag-us-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91073"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91122,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91073\/revisions\/91122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}