Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell vowed on Wednesday that he and his fellow policymakers would “keep at” their battle to beat down inflation, as the U.S. central bank hiked interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point for a third straight time and signaled that borrowing costs would keep rising this year.
In a sobering new set of projections, the Fed foresees its policy rate rising at a faster pace and to a higher level than expected, the economy slowing to a crawl, and unemployment rising to a degree historically associated with recessions.
Traders have been concerned that the Fed is remaining more hawkish for longer than some had anticipated. Projections from the meeting indicated that the Fed expects to raise rates by at least 1.25 percentage points in its two remaining meetings this year.
‘Main message has not changed’
“My main message has not changed since Jackson Hole,” Powell said in his post-meeting news conference, referring to his policy speech at the Fed’s annual symposium in August in Wyoming. “The FOMC is strongly resolved to bring inflation down to 2%, and we will keep at it until the job is done.”
The increases that started in March — and from a point of near-zero — mark the most aggressive Fed tightening since it started using the overnight funds rate as its principal policy tool in 1990. The only comparison was in 1994, when the Fed hiked a total of 2.25 percentage points; it would begin cutting rates by July of the following year.
Along with the massive rate increases, Fed officials signaled the intention of continuing to hike until the funds level hits a “terminal rate,” or end point, of 4.6% in 2023. That implies a quarter-point rate hike next year but no decreases.
The “dot plot” of individual members’ expectations doesn’t point to rate cuts until 2024. Powell and his colleagues have emphasized in recent weeks that it is unlikely rate cuts will happen next year, as the market had been pricing.
Federal Open Market Committee members indicate they expect the rate hikes to have consequences. The funds rate on its face addresses the rates that banks charge each other for overnight lending, but it bleeds through to many consumer adjustable-rate debt instruments, such as home equity loans, credit cards and auto financing.
In their quarterly updates of estimates for rates and economic data, officials coalesced around expectations for the unemployment rate to rise to 4.4% by next year from its current 3.7%. Increases of that magnitude often are accompanied by recessions.
Along with that, they see GDP growth slowing to 0.2% for 2022, rising slightly in the following years to a longer-term rate of just 1.8%. The revised forecast is a sharp cut from the 1.7% estimate in June and comes following two consecutive quarters of negative growth, a commonly accepted definition of recession.
Powell conceded a recession is possible, particularly if the Fed has to keep tightening aggressively.
“No one knows whether this process will lead to a recession or, if so, how significant that recession will be,” he said.
The hikes also come with the hopes that headline inflation will drift down to 5.4% this year, as measured by the Fed’s preferred personal consumption expenditures price index, which showed inflation at 6.3% in July. The summary of economic projections then sees inflation falling back to the Fed’s 2% goal by 2025.
Core inflation excluding food and energy is expected to decline to 4.5% this year, little changed from the current 4.6% level, before ultimately falling to 2.1% by 2025. (The PCE reading has been running well below the consumer price index.)
The reduction in economic growth came even though the FOMC’s statement massaged language that in July had described spending and production as having “softened.” This meeting’s statement noted: “Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production.” Those were the only changes in a statement that received unanimous approval.
Otherwise, the statement continued to describe job gains as “robust” and noted that “inflation remains elevated.” It also repeated that “ongoing increases in the target rate will be appropriate.”
