As the Federal Open Market Committee begins its two-day policy meeting Tuesday, it confronts dual situations that call for diametrically opposite policy reactions. Inflation has risen substantially more than the monetary authorities had expected, which is weighing on consumers and approval ratings for President Joe Biden.
At the same time, the economy’s growth appears to be decelerating as spending on goods slows from its breakneck pace and the new burst of Covid-19 cases related to the Delta variant deters a recovery of spending on services. In particular, the much-anticipated return to the office by the millions still working at home may be pushed back, at least temporarily and perhaps permanently.
With the consumer-price index up 5.4% from a year ago, inflation is top of mind for consumers. As a result, 54% of Americans say the economy is in poor shape, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
The Federal Reserve still pins the price rises on transitory factors, to use the buzzword of the moment. Even so, increased costs are having a negative impact. Sales of new single-family homes fell to a 14-month low in June, the third straight monthly drop, as soaring prices for materials and labor hit both supplies and demand. The median price of a new home was 6.1% more expensive from a year ago, to $361,800.
As this column discussed this past weekend, the Fed is exacerbating home-price inflation with its purchases of $120 billion of securities a month. That consists of $80 billion of Treasuries and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Some would-be home buyers are giving up on the fruitless quest to buy a house as prices soar, the New York Times reported, a spiral made worse by the Fed’s injection of liquidity into the mortgage market.
At the same time, the economy has passed its peak growth and is expected to decelerate significantly from here on to 2022.Goldman Sachs on Monday reduced its GDP forecast, in line with the consensus of economists to 6.6% for the full year of 2021, but to a sharply lower trajectory next year, back to the prepandemic trend rate of just 1.5% to 2%.
That comes as no surprise to David Rosenberg, founder and head of Rosenberg Research,who said recently that the economy looked set to slow dramatically after the burst of consumer spending on durable goods such as automobiles and home appliances and durable goods diminished.
Goldman’s concern is a handoff from goods to services spending will be delayed or thwarted, especially as a slower return to offices continues to keep a lid on workers’ spending for commuting, work clothes and dry cleaning, and food away from home.
Chair Jerome Powell has said all along that Fed policy will depend on the path of the pandemic, which isn’t over, as shown by the upsurge of Covid cases and less than half the population vaccinated, Rosenberg wrote in an email. At the same time, if the FOMC indicates it is moving toward announcing the wind-down of asset purchases, this move to a more accommodative policy could be short-lived, he added.
Rosenberg recalled the Fed shifted to a tightening bias in mid-2008, thinking the worst of the mortgage crisis was over when Bear Stearns was folded into JPMorgan Chase(ticker: JPM) the previous March. Of course, the Fed then had to reverse itself radically by the time the crisis deepened, culminating in the failure of Lehman Brothers and the bailout of American International Group that September.
Nobody is suggesting the Fed is about to raise its key federal funds interest rate target from its current rock-bottom 0-0.25%, however. But the FOMC faces conflicting forces about continuing its massive liquidity injections that were initiated at the height of the pandemic crisis in March 2020 as the economy is passing from its peak growth phase and inflation is causing consternation on Main Street.
Whatever it decides, Powell will have some explaining to do Wednesday at his post-confab press conference.