A troubling about-face at the US Federal Reserve

The US Federal Reserve has gone from being concerned about inflation to being "glib" about it. Will its inaction allow inflation to take hold?

"I have seen a handful of sea changes in Fed policy over the years, and this was a big one," says Jared Dillian on MauldinEconomics.com. The US Federal Reserve has gone from being concerned about a possible return of inflation "to being fairly glib abut it". Last week, we heard that US core, or underlying inflation (excluding volatile food and energy prices) rose at an annual rate of 2.3% last month, the highest figure in almost four years. Overall inflation, depressed due to the drop in oil prices, was up 1% year-on-year.

"The data are troubling," as Rex Nutting puts it on MarketWatch.com. "Six months ago, inflation barely had a pulse." On the Fed's preferred measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index, it was climbing at 0.2% year-on-year. The PCE figure today is 1.25%. The Fed's target is 2% on this gauge. Nonetheless, Fed chair Janet Yellen said "we haven't yet concluded" that there could be a sustained rise in core inflation. Moreover, the Fed released a chart indicating that it only expects two interest-rate hikes in 2016, down from a projected four last December.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.