Yahoo Finance Fed's Williams and Bostic don't see any 'urgency' or 'mad-dash hurry' to cut rates
New York Fed president John Williams said Thursday he doesn’t see any "urgency" to cut interest rates, becoming the latest central bank official to dial back the timing of any easing in monetary policy.
Rates will need to come down at some point, he added, but that will be driven by the economy.
"I think we've got interest rates in a place that is moving us gradually to our goals," Williams said during a Semafor conference in Washington, D.C.
"So I definitely don't feel urgency to cut interest rates. I think the monetary policy is doing exactly what we like to see over time. The data will inform our decisions."
Another Fed official, Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic, reiterated Thursday that he doesn’t expect to lower rates until the end of the year, noting that he is comfortable being patient since job growth remains strong and people are making good wages.
"I'm not in a mad-dash hurry to get there if all these other good things are happening," Bostic said at a conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"Right now, our stance is restrictive. It will slow the economy down and eventually get us to 2% [inflation]."
Bostic has said previously that he expects one rate cut near the end of 2024, and he didn't change that outlook when speaking on Thursday.
Read more: What the Fed rate decision means for bank accounts, CDs, loans, and credit cards
The new comments from Williams are more cautious than his stance earlier in the week. On Monday he told Bloomberg TV that rate cuts would "likely" start this year if inflation continues to drop.
They also follow a hawkish pivot from Fed Chair Jay Powell, who said Tuesday that it will take "longer than expected" to achieve the confidence needed to get inflation down to the central bank’s 2% target.
"Given the strength of the labor market and progress on inflation so far, it's appropriate to allow restrictive policy further time to work and let the data and the evolving outlook guide us," Powell said at an event in Washington on the Canadian economy.
Another official who pulled back expectations for the timing of rate cuts this week was Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester.
She said Wednesday that inflation has run higher than expected this year. While at some point the Fed will start to cut rates, the central bank doesn’t need to do that in a "hurry."
She had said previously that she expected to cut rates three times later this year.
Investors have also pushed back their rate cut expectations, pricing in the first cut in September with dwindling odds of a second rate cut this year.
The about-face from Fed officials comes after the Consumer Price Index for March showed inflation was hotter than expected for the third month in a row.
CPI rose 3.5% over the prior year, an acceleration from February's 3.2% annual gain in prices and more than economists expected.
The year-over-year change in the so-called core CPI — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — was 3.8%. That was the same level as it was in February but a tenth of a percent higher than expected.
Those figures broke a swift downward trend that had been developing in the second half of last year and raised questions about whether prices will continue coming down slowly.
When asked whether the Fed could end up raising rates given sticky inflation and a strong job market and economy, Williams said Thursday that’s not his expectation.
“My expectation right now is that interest rates are in a good place and, eventually, at some point, [the Fed] would want to lower interest rates as the economy really gets to the 2% inflation that we're headed towards,” he said. “Of course, you never know what can happen.”
Williams added, “if the data are telling us that we would need higher interest rates to achieve our goals, then we would obviously want to do that, [but] it's not my base case.”
"It's a little bit of a bumpy road. But overall, the trend is that inflation is gradually coming down."
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