For some time now, Federal Reserve officials have been hesitant to put a precise time frame on when they will begin to tighten policy, except to note the action lies well into the future.
But on Monday, one of their chief lieutenants, the man charged with implementing Fed policy, offered a pretty clear take on the likely timing of a move up in interest rates. The official, New York Fed Markets Group chief Brian Sack, has no formal role in setting monetary policy. But his position elevates his importance, and he suggested in a speech some sort of rate tightening will occur by late year.
“The current configuration of yields and asset prices incorporates expectations that short-term interest rates will begin to rise around the end of this year,” Sack told a group of economists in Virginia. “The markets seem prepared for the risks toward tighter policy,” he said, adding a “decent-sized term premium” on longer-dated yields suggests low chances of a “sizable upward shift in yields’ when that tightening comes.
Why is this observation important? Sack’s speech was entitled “Preparing for a Smooth (Eventual) Exit” from the current state of very stimulative monetary policy. If the Fed wants a tranquil exit from its current stance of 0% interest rates and if it thinks market are priced for the move, then it’s reasonable to believe a late-year increase in rates is what policy makers have penciled in.
Sack’s speech also laid out a path for the unwind. He sees the Fed draining reserves on a temporary basis, then raising rates, all the while allowing the $1.7 trillion in mortgage and Treasury assets it will have purchased by end-March to mature. Any active sales will come much later. Importantly, he said the tools to drain reserves temporarily will be in place by midyear, lending additional heft to the idea the Fed can start easing rates up off 0% by year end.
The Fed “will engage in reverse repos and term deposits in midsummer followed by a rate hike in September,” said Barclays Capital economist Michelle Meyer.
To be sure, some Fed officials like St. Louis Fed President James Bullard have suggested a rate increase may not come this year, or even in 2011. Others, like New York Fed President William Dudley, San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, haven’t made predictions and have simply affirmed the need for low rates to be maintained for an extended period.
In a speech Tuesday, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said, “I think six months is a good time period…we’ll continue to have accommodative policy like we have today,” largely because the still-troubled state of the labor market requires that stance.
However, in light of the labor market’s relative resilience in the face of massive snowstorms in February, some economists are starting to expect better times for hiring, saying that could move forward the timing of a policy tightening.
Deutsche Bank is now predicting as much as a 350,000 job gain in March, which will likely be followed by more hiring the following months. Given unemployment’s centrality to Fed interest-rate decisions, the bank’s economists told clients “to the extent that the labor market improves beyond what policymakers project, the rhetoric from FOMC participants should shift toward earlier rate increases.”
There’s a good chance that will happen according to Deutsche Bank, because it sees the unemployment rate falling to 9% by the fourth quarter, against the Fed’s current projection of it ranging between 9.5% and 9.7%.