By Howard Schneider
RALEIGH, North Carolina, May 21 (Reuters) – How businesses and consumers respond to ongoing economic shocks will determine if the U.S. Federal Reserve can “look through” current high inflation or needs to consider raising interest rates, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said on Thursday.
The decision to hold rates steady at the Fed’s last meeting “made sense” as policymakers gathered more information on jobs and inflation in the midst of a series of economic developments as disparate as high oil prices and the rollout of artificial intelligence technology, Barkin said in comments prepared for delivery to an economic group.
“It made sense to give ourselves time,” Barkin said, adding he expected that in coming months the Fed could see further developments that “pressure the employment side of our mandate, the inflation side of our mandate, or conceivably both. If we do, the Fed is well positioned to respond as appropriate.”
A growing number of Fed policymakers at the April meeting felt a rate hike might be needed to quell inflation that has been rising in the face of high energy costs, an investment boom around AI, and household consumption that has remained unexpectedly resilient.
Barkin did not directly weigh in on his expectations for interest rates or whether a hike may be needed.
But he said the path of policy will hinge on whether consumers remain as resilient as they have been in spending, whether businesses start using rising productivity as a reason to lay off workers, and whether inflation expectations can remain anchored after more than 5 years in which the Fed has missed its target.
“Looking through supply shocks has worked well for a generation,” Barkin said. “Looking forward, it’s easy to imagine more challenging conditions: heightened geopolitical tensions, trade fragmentation, more frequent severe weather events, rising government debt, cyber risk, slowing workforce growth and more..It’s worth asking whether the cumulative impact of so many waves risks loosening the anchor.”
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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