Jerome Powell says no date set yet for US to begin tapering

US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank could begin reducing its monthly bond purchases later in 2021, though it would not be in a hurry to begin raising interest rates thereafter.

The economy has now met the test of “substantial further progress” towards the Fed’s inflation objective that Powell and his colleagues said would be a precondition for tapering the bond purchases, while the labour market has also made “clear progress,” the Fed chief said Friday in the prepared text of a virtual speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium.

At the Fed’s most recent policy meeting in late July, “I was of the view, as were most participants, that if the economy evolved broadly as anticipated, it could be appropriate to start reducing the pace of asset purchases this year,” Powell said.

“The intervening month has brought more progress in the form of a strong employment report for July, but also the further spread of the Delta variant,” he said. “We will be carefully assessing incoming data and the evolving risks.”

At the July federal open market committee meeting, most Fed officials agreed it would probably be appropriate to begin tapering the central bank’s $120bn-a-month bond-buying programme before the end of 2021, according to a record of the gathering. Some are pushing for a move as soon as September.

The S&P 500 rose during the much-anticipated address to stand more than 0.6% higher from opening levels. Ten-year treasury yields slipped slightly to about 1.33%.

Monetary policymakers would like to conclude the purchases before officials begin raising interest rates, and several in June saw a possible need for rate increases as early as 2022 amid inflation that is running above the central bank’s 2% target. The Fed cut its benchmark rate to nearly zero and relaunched the crisis-era purchase programme in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

Powell cautioned that a move to begin winding down the bond-buying programme should not be interpreted as a sign that rate hikes would soon follow.

“The timing and pace of the coming reduction in asset purchases will not be intended to carry a direct signal regarding the timing of interest rate lift-off, for which we have articulated a different and substantially more stringent test,” Powell said.

“We have said that we will continue to hold the target range for the federal funds rate at its current level until the economy reaches conditions consistent with maximum employment, and inflation has reached 2% and is on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time,” he said. “We have much ground to cover to reach maximum employment, and time will tell whether we have reached 2% inflation on a sustainable basis.”

Quarterly projections published in June showed seven of 18 FOMC participants thought it would be appropriate to begin raising rates in 2021, while six more expected rate increases would become appropriate by 2023.

Powell spoke as investors awaited a decision from US President Joe Biden on whether to renominate him for a second term or pick someone else. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Biden advisers were considering recommending Powell for reappointment.

Total US employment is still about 6-million jobs below pre-pandemic levels. June and July were strong months for hiring as restrictions on service industries were lifted across the country, but the recent spread of the coronavirus Delta variant is raising uncertainty about prospects for the months ahead.

The Fed chair stuck to the central bank’s message that the current bout of inflation was likely to be transitory, emphasising that the recent rise “is so far largely the product of a relatively narrow group of goods and services that have been directly affected by the pandemic and the reopening of the economy” and should be expected to dissipate.

He pointed to inflation expectation measures as a sign that consumers, businesses and investors also shared that assessment, and highlighted the risk that downward pressures on inflation, of the kind observed over the last decade, could reassert themselves once the pandemic ended.

Global factors

“While the underlying global disinflationary factors are likely to evolve over time, there is little reason to think that they have suddenly reversed or abated,” Powell said. “It seems more likely that they will continue to weigh on inflation as the pandemic passes into history.”

This year’s symposium, typically a high-profile retreat attended by central bankers around the world, was originally slated to return to its usual in-person format, but the Kansas City Fed scrapped that plan on August 20 amid rising coronavirus case counts in Teton County, Wyoming.

During 2020’s virtual proceedings, Powell unveiled a new strategy for monetary policymaking, which marked the conclusion of an internal review that lasted nearly 20 months.

The new framework dictates Fed officials allow the economic expansion to progress further than they have allowed in the past before raising interest rates, to drive unemployment rates down faster and allow low-income groups to share in the benefits from a strong economy.

That also means allowing inflation to overshoot the central bank’s 2% target for a time, to make up for periods coming out of downturns when it underruns the target.

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