Fed: Sharp shift may risk exacerbating concerns about the outlook – ING

At today’s meeting, the Fed kept rates unchanged as expected. James Knightley, Chief International Economist at ING, notes that the accompanying forecasts and “dot diagram” indicate that the Fed will be very, very patient.

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“Unsurprisingly the dollar has reacted negatively to this and treasury yields have fallen too. We had expected officials to take one of their projected hikes out of the diagram for this year, but removing both is a surprise. It seems pretty aggressive given officials have been repeatedly telling us that the US economy is “strong”. Indeed, they have only cut their 4Q19 GDP growth forecast from 2.3% to 2.1% and left their core inflation forecast at 2%.”

“Such a move will only boost the market conviction that the next Federal Reserve move will be an interest rate cut. Concerns over economic headwinds such as trade protectionism, the government shutdown, weak figures from Europe and China (which Jerome Powell emphasised in the press conference) and the lagged effects of higher interest rates and the strong dollar all do justify caution. The recent weak run of US activity data has also been disappointing while core inflation has undershot expectations. However, today’s sharp shift from the Fed may risk exacerbating any business and household concern about the outlook.”

“Given such clear direction from officials and the continued emphasis on “patient”, it looks as though we will have to take that September hike out of our forecast. For now, the Federal Reserve is still signalling a bias to tighten policy given the rate hike pencilled into 2020. But with a presidential election later in the year and President Trump keen to gain political capital out of challenging the Fed on any rate hikes, we are sceptical that would happen.”