Preview
At tomorrow's FOMC meeting, the Fed will almost certainly hike 25 basis points. With that hike comes the full conclusion of the Fed's ambitious yet sometimes opaque "maximum employment" forward guidance. A hike in March is a clear declaration that the Fed believes the
Journalists can pretty much pre-write their headlines given the spike in oil prices. Year-over-year headline inflation readings are set to make new highs, potentially breaching 8% based on the food and energy impulse from what we might call the "Putin shock" to key commodities. At the same time,
January is always a high-variance month for inflation readings and especially so for this January. We have been flagging the dynamics that were likely to grease the runway to elevated inflation prints in Q4 (which mostly materialized as described). We expect general strength in the January inflation print, primarily due
Friday's employment report is set to be messy for a number of reasons, not just because Omicron is likely to weigh somewhat heavily on nonfarm payroll estimates. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, your best bet to avoid getting spun around by all of the
It is key for commentators and policymakers to bear in mind that "transitory vs. persistent" is not the same debate as "narrow vs. broad-based."
The policy mistake worth worrying about isn’t the speed of taper per se; it's the signal that taper sends about the timing of liftoff in interest rate policy.
As the year ends, the final three inflation prints are more likely to be on the hotter side of what policymakers are comfortable with, especially due to developments in motor vehicle and air travel prices.