US Fed’s Powell says ‘time has come’ to lower interest rates

Fast rise in prices led the Fed to increase its benchmark policy rate from near zero to the highest range in a quarter of a century.

United States Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has offered an explicit endorsement of interest rate cuts, saying further cooling in the job market would be unwelcome and expressing confidence that inflation is within reach of the central bank’s 2 percent target.

“The upside risks to inflation have diminished. And the downside risks to employment have increased,” Powell said on Friday in a highly anticipated speech at the Fed’s annual economic conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks.”

Referencing the two tasks that Congress has given to the Fed, Powell said his “confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2 percent” after rising to about 7 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic but unemployment is increasing.

While Powell said the jump of nearly a percentage point in the unemployment rate over the past year was due largely to rising labour supply and slowed hiring, not increased layoffs, he also was emphatic that the Fed wants to prevent any further erosion in the jobs market and his prior talk of labour market “pain” as necessary to control inflation was now a thing of the past.

The current unemployment rate of 4.3 percent is roughly at the level Fed officials feel is consistent with stable inflation over the longer run.

“We do not seek or welcome further cooling in labour market conditions,” Powell said. “We will do everything we can to support a strong labour market as we make further progress toward price stability. With an appropriate dialing back of policy restraint, there is good reason to think that the economy will get back to 2 percent inflation while maintaining a strong labour market.”

Traders on Friday continued to bet on a quarter-percentage-point rate cut at the Fed’s September 17-18 meeting, but after Powell’s remarks, they priced in about a one-in-three chance of a half-percentage-point cut, up from a little more than a one-in-four probability earlier.

“Powell was clear about the first rate cut but not so much about the next ones, so I don’t think he’ll be exploding out of the blocks with a 50-basis-point cut,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. “I think slow and steady is how the Fed wants to pace this early part of the easing.”

Markets are betting the rate cuts will be ongoing with futures pricing in a Fed policy rate in the 3 percent to 3.25 percent range by the end of 2025, down from the current 5.25 percent to 5.5 percent range, where it has been since July last year.

New chapter

Powell’s comments are as close as he is likely to come to declaring victory over the outbreak of inflation that rattled the economy at the start of the pandemic.

The fast rise in prices led the Fed to increase its benchmark policy rate from near zero to the current range, which is the highest in a quarter of a century. It has been held there for more than a year even as the economy defied frequent predictions of recession, inflation fell and economic growth continued – the makings of a textbook “soft landing” with the endgame of rate cuts now set to begin.

“While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress” towards restoring price stability, Powell said. The Fed defines price stability as 2 percent inflation as measured by the personal consumption expenditures price index. The index is currently running at an annual rate of 2.5 percent.

Powell spoke at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park to a gathering of central bankers and economists, which has become a global platform for officials to shape views of monetary policy and the economy.

His comments largely cement a decision the Fed has telegraphed through earlier Powell comments and a readout of the central bank’s July meeting, which said a “vast majority” of policymakers agreed rate cuts likely would begin next month.

But his emphatic language has now put beyond doubt that the Fed is opening a new chapter in monetary policy.

He did not, however, go much beyond that to describe how the Fed would be weighing its decisions from here as it navigates a long-awaited policy easing.

Fed officials will provide updated economic projections at their meeting next month that will provide more detail on how they expect the benchmark policy rate to evolve from here.