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Part of the problem is that the Fed hasn’t done what it’s doing now — drastically tightening money to fight inflation — for a long time, indeed since the early 1980s. And some analysts, perhaps including people at the Fed, may have forgotten one important lesson from monetary policy in the bad old days. Namely, it takes a significant amount of time before higher interest rates translate into either an economic slowdown or a drop in the inflation rate.
Consider how Fed policy affects the real economy. One of the main channels is through housing. Higher interest rates lead to reduced demand for houses, which leads to a fall in construction; as incomes earned in housing construction slide, this leads to reduced demand for other goods, and the effects spill over to the economy at large.
But all of this takes a while. The Fed’s rate hikes have indeed led to a sharp fall in applications for building permits. However, construction employment hasn’t yet even begun to decline, presumably because many workers are still busy finishing houses started when rates were lower. And the wider economic effects of the coming housing slump are still many months away.
The other major channel through which the Fed affects the economy is via the value of the dollar. A strong dollar makes U.S. products less competitive on world markets; falling exports and rising imports will eventually be a major economic drag. But it takes time to shift to new suppliers, so this effect won’t really happen until next year.....
....For example, a new report shows that unfilled job offerings fell sharply in August. Why is this important? Many economists — especially economists who have been warning about persistent inflation — argue that the tightness of the labor market is better measured by the ratio of job vacancies to unemployment than by the unemployment rate itself. But this ratio, while still elevated, has already dropped substantially; as Goldman Sachs puts it, almost half of the gap between jobs and workers has been eliminated over the past few months.
Another new report shows that demand for apartments has stalled, which will eventually translate into a decline in rent growth — which basically drives official estimates of the cost of shelter, a key component of most measures of underlying inflation.
Oh, and remember all those supply-chain problems that disrupted the economy and raised inflation some months back? Well, the cost of shipping a container across the Pacific, which was $20,586 in September 2021, is now $2,265.
I’d argue that these indicators tell us that the Fed has already done enough to ensure a big decline in inflation — but also, all too possibly, a recession.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
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Comments
Whether we get the inflation rate back to a steady 2% is another question altogether.
I remember so much wishful thinking from our last bout with this, even as we went off silver, then gold, then tried wage and price controls, so on, and so forth.
In the meantime, it's nice to think inflation could be whipped now, as the old button used encourage us to believe.