US Fed chief pledges to keep rates low
Washington, US – US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell attempted to tamp down rising inflation concerns, and again has pledged to keep benchmark lending rates low until jobs recover and prices have risen consistently.
The COVID-19 pandemic remains the key factor determining how quickly the world’s largest economy can recover, but Powell said vaccine rollouts offer hope things can return to normal quickly and the Fed has the tools to deal with price increases.
With Congress moving towards approving President Joe Biden’s US$1.9tn rescue plan, the central bank chief on Tuesday remained steadfastly noncommittal about the package, but he did downplay the need to address the US$3tn US government deficit immediately.
Amid growing fears on markets that a quick recovery from the pandemic - fueled by more government stimulus on top of nearly US$3tn last year - will lead to higher interest rates and hinder the ability of companies to borrow, Powell tried to reassure skittish investors during the first day of his semi-annual testimony before Congress.
He insisted that the Fed will keep rates at the current level near zero until the economy reaches ‘maximum employment and inflation has risen to 2 per cent and is on track to moderately exceed 2 per cent for some time’.
However, he cautioned, “The economy is a long way from our employment and inflation goals, and it is likely to take some time for substantial further progress to be achieved.”
Powell said inflation is expected to pick up and will be ‘volatile’ this year, after declines during the past year of the pandemic, and as Americans begin to spend more.
However, he told the Senate Banking Committee those price increases are unlikely to be large or persistent.
“We’ve averaged less than 2 per cent inflation, over the last 25 years,” Powell said. “Inflation dynamics do change over time but they don’t change on a dime.”
And he stressed that the Fed is prepared to handle whatever comes its way, so ‘if it does turn out that unwanted inflation pressures arising are persistent and we have the tools to deal with that’.
In more than a decade following the 2008 global financial crisis, inflation barely cracked the Fed’s 2 per cent goal, even when unemployment reached a 50year low of 3.5 per cent in early 2020.
That caused the central bank to rethink policy, and say that rather than raise the lending rate as unemployment falls to head off inflation, it will hold fire until inflation actually breaks through the target level for an extended period.
But given the prospect for more stimulus fuelling a rapid bounceback in economic activity, some economists have raised concerns that prices could spiral.
The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds - a key red flag on inflation - has spiked in recent weeks. That in turn has hit stock prices due to concerns the Fed will have to raise interest rates more quickly than expected in an economy already awash in debt.
In addition to keeping the key interest rate low, Fed also will continue to buy bonds ‘at least at their current pace (of US$120bn a month) until substantial further progress has been made toward our goals’, Powell said.
Government spending and the Fed keeping its foot on the gas has helped the economy stabilise and begin to recover, although it still has a way to go, Powell said. “The path of the economy continues to depend significantly on the course of the virus,” he said.