When Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell spoke Friday at the central bank's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., he didn't say anything exactly new. But in reinforcing his commitment to restoring price stability, the chairman sounded more resolute than he had in other recent public appearances. "Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct," he said, opening a speech that would last only minutes, mostly stick to the importance of the inflation fight, and highlight how his job is only getting harder.
"Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone," Powell said, noting that higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor markets are the "unfortunate costs of reducing inflation" and will "bring some pain to households and businesses."
Strategists agreed that Powell was forceful. In weighing the two legs of the dual mandate -- inflation and economic growth -- the Fed will decidedly come down in favor of reducing inflation, says Cliff Hodge, chief investment officer at Cornerstone Wealth. "Powell can't come right out and say that the Fed is fine walking us right into recession in order to crush inflation, but that is what this messaging unequivocally implies."
Yet Powell is only starting to convince markets that he will do whatever it takes to beat inflation. Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance, says a market fully expecting the Fed to follow through on its pledge would be down at least 20% this year. After Friday's fall of 2.5% in the S&P 500, the index is off 14% in 2022. At the same time, traders on Friday shifted bets toward a half-point hike in September and away from a third consecutive three-quarter-point increase.
Aside from having to fight markets that have been fighting the Fed -- with summer stock market rallies helping to ease the very financial conditions the central bank is trying to tighten -- Powell has two particular forces working against him.
First, there is the job market.
In a report this past week, Piper Sandler economist Jake Oubina highlighted growing concerns over labor-force growth. He says that many positive postcrisis labor-force participation trends have sputtered and, in some cases, reversed. Prime-age participation has stalled at a level about 600,000 workers short of the pre-Covid tally. And the number of Americans not in the labor force who don't want a job rose to 19.9 million from 19.5 million over June and July; that's above the pre-Covid trend of about 19.1 million. In addition, the improvement in the labor-force participation rate among lower-skilled workers recently rolled over, Oubina observes.
Long Covid, or lingering negative effects of the virus, might explain some of the labor-supply problem. Oubina notes that the number of people out of the labor force because of disability is about one million above pre-Covid levels. A new report by Katie Bach at the Brookings Institution finds that around 16 million working-age Americans now have long Covid. Of those, Bach says, two million to four million are out of work, due to the condition. If the labor market is a main transmission mechanism of Fed policy, an acutely short labor supply complicates the picture and may mean labor demand must cool more than appreciated to take pressure off wages and prices.
The second force working against the Fed is fiscal policy.
President Joe Biden's student-debt forgiveness plan has ignited an economic debate, alongside a political one. Analysts at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget Model say the plan will cost roughly $500 billion over a 10-year budget window. Relative to current law, (assuming that the interest moratorium that has been extended until the end of the year does end), the program will add about 0.2 to 0.3 of a percentage point to inflation, says Jason Furman, economics professor at Harvard University and head of former President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
Melissa Kearney, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, says the debt-forgiveness policy will, by design, result in millions of households having more discretionary income. "That is a boost to demand and thus pushes in the direction of rising prices," she says, adding that this will drive up the cost of higher education and loans going forward. She notes that Biden's announcement mentioned that the immediate forgiveness will be paired with more generous forgiveness terms on future loans, which "essentially subsidizes the very sector whose ballooning pricing got so many people into this predicament." And it means that even more people will take out loans in the future, she says, further pushing up the costs of higher education.
In normal times, Furman's estimate wouldn't seem very significant and Kearney's points would be cause for longer-term concern, but not necessarily for losing sleep. Given how high inflation is now, however, it's a step in the wrong direction that undermines the central bank's efforts to cool demand and cure inflation.
The Fed does have something working in its favor, and it is the data. The latest indications of cooling prices came Friday, when the personal consumption expenditure index declined from its level a month earlier, slipping to a 6.3% year-over-year pace from 6.8% in June. The core versions, which back out food and energy and represent the Fed's favorite inflation measures, also moved in the right direction. From a year earlier, the core PCE fell to 4.6% from 4.8%, still well above the 2% target, but not nearly as elevated as the consumer price index. Separately on Friday, the University of Michigan revised its latest gauges of inflation expectations slightly lower, to 4.8% for the next year and 2.9% over the next five to 10 years. Powell says that the recent inflation cool-down is welcome, but not enough.
At this point, the forces working against the Fed outweigh those moving in the right direction. They are all the more reasons to believe Powell when he says that failing to fix inflation isn't an option, and they are reasons to believe policy might be even more painful than it would otherwise have to be.
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