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    Yellen says it should be ‘unthinkable’ for the U.S. to default on its debt

    “The notion of defaulting on our debt is something that would so badly undermine the U.S. and global economy that I think it should be regarded by everyone as unthinkable,” Janet Yellen said.
    Former U.S. President Donald Trump earlier endorsed Republican lawmakers to let the nation default on its debt in a CNN town hall.

    Janet Yellen, US Treasury secretary, during a news conference at the Group of Seven (G-7) finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Niigata, Japan, on Thursday, May 11, 2023.
    Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the idea of U.S. lawmakers letting the nation default on its debt should be “unthinkable.”
    Speaking to reporters ahead of the G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors meetings in Niigata, Japan, Yellen said she was aware of former President Donald Trump’s suggestion for Republican lawmakers to let the nation default.

    “The notion of defaulting on our debt is something that would so badly undermine the U.S. and global economy that I think it should be regarded by everyone as unthinkable,” she told reporters. “America should never default.”
    When asked about steps the Biden administration could take in the wake of a default, Yellen emphasized that lawmakers must raise the debt ceiling.
    “There is no good alternative that will save us from catastrophe. I don’t want to get into ranking which bad alternative is better than others, but the only reasonable thing is to raise the debt ceiling and to avoid the dreadful consequences that will come,” she told reporters, noting that defaulting on debt can be prevented.
    “There is no good reason to generate a good crisis of our own making. The U.S. Congress has raised or suspended the debt limit almost 80 times since 1960. I urge it to act quickly to do so once again,” she said.

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    Yellen’s comments come after she warned of an “economic catastrophe” if the U.S. fails to raise its debt ceiling in the coming weeks. She has also previously warned that the U.S. could fail to meet its debt obligations sooner than expected – and it may run out of measures as early as June 1.

    Media reports last week cited a Treasury official who said her trip to Japan will be cut short to make sure she can continue taking part in efforts to address the debt ceiling issue.
    She told journalists on Thursday, “Another meeting is scheduled for next Friday and staff ar working to see if they can resolve this, so I’m very hopeful the differences can be bridged and the debt ceiling will be raised.” More

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    Biden Woos Republican Moderates in Debt Ceiling Standoff

    A day after an unproductive meeting on the debt limit with Speaker McCarthy, the president assailed “extreme” Republicans who he said had “taken control of the House.”President Biden sought to drive a wedge among Republicans in their escalating dispute over spending and debt on Wednesday, effectively reaching out to moderates in hopes of convincing them to break away from Speaker Kevin McCarthy rather than risk triggering a national default that could throw the economy into a tailspin.Appearing in a competitive suburb with a vulnerable House Republican in his sights, Mr. Biden accused Mr. McCarthy of pursuing a radical strategy at the behest of the “extreme” wing of his party loyal to former President Donald J. Trump, putting the country in economic jeopardy in a way that he said reasonable Republicans of his own era in the Senate would not have done.“They’ve taken control of the House,” Mr. Biden said of this wing to a friendly audience at SUNY Westchester Community College in New York’s Hudson Valley. “They have a speaker who has his job because he yielded to the, quote, MAGA element of the party,” he added.Those hard-right Republicans, Mr. Biden said, are “literally, not figuratively, holding the economy hostage by threatening to default on our nation’s debt, debt we’ve already incurred, we’ve already incurred over the last couple hundred years, unless we give into their threats and demands.”The trip seemed aimed at least in part at peeling off even a few House Republicans to force the speaker’s hand. Legislation that Mr. McCarthy pushed through the House last month linking an increase in the debt ceiling to significant spending restraints passed with just one vote to spare, so even a relatively small mutiny would complicate Mr. McCarthy’s position.Mr. Biden singled out Representative Mike Lawler, a local Republican congressman sitting in the front row in the audience on Wednesday, praising him as a more rational member of his party. “Mike’s on the other team,” Mr. Biden said, “but you know what? Mike is the kind of guy that when I was in the Congress, there was a kind of Republican I was used to dealing with. He’s not one of these MAGA Republicans.”Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a fellow Democrat, greeted Mr. Biden in Westchester. The trip seemed aimed at least in part at peeling off even a few House Republicans to force Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s hand. Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesThe president’s trip came a day after he hosted Mr. McCarthy and other congressional leaders at the White House to discuss the crisis. The session produced no breakthroughs, but the leaders agreed to have their staffs meet every day and to reconvene themselves on Friday.The federal government has reached the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling set by law and the Treasury Department estimates that it will run out of ways to avoid default as soon as June 1. Unless Congress acts by then, the nation will fail to pay its obligations for the first time in history, with potentially devastating consequences for an already fragile economy. Mr. McCarthy insists that any debt ceiling increase be tied to spending cuts, while Mr. Biden rejects linking the two; he has agreed to negotiate deficit controls separately.The annual deficit reached $1.375 trillion last year, up from $983 billion in 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic prompted vast relief spending, and is projected to double in the next decade. Even aside from the linkage with the debt ceiling, the two sides are drastically apart on how to address the red ink. Mr. Biden has proposed a budget that would reduce projected deficits by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while Mr. McCarthy’s plan would scale back deficits by $4.8 trillion over a decade largely through cuts in discretionary programs.In speaking to a swing-voting New York suburb, Mr. Biden seemed to have two audiences — voters outside the capital who may not be paying as much attention to the debate and Mr. Lawler. A 36-year-old former political operative and first-term Republican, Mr. Lawler is an obvious target for the White House to try to sway. He ousted Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, then the chairman of House Democrats’ campaign operation, in a district that Mr. Biden won by 10 percentage points.In Washington, Mr. Lawler has positioned himself as a serious-minded moderate, breaking with his party on some cultural issues while supporting Mr. McCarthy’s debt ceiling and spending proposal. Both parties view him as one of the most vulnerable Republicans in 2024, and Democrats are already lining up millions of dollars and potential candidates to defeat him.For now, Mr. Lawler appears to be toeing a careful line between his party’s leaders and the president. When the White House reached out with an invitation to the event that many in the G.O.P. would have shunned, he promptly accepted. In media interviews before and after the speech, Mr. Lawler reiterated he would not support a default. But he also chastised Mr. Biden for not engaging with Mr. McCarthy sooner and insisted on broad spending cuts.Mr. Biden seemed to have two audiences: swing voters and Representative Mike Lawler, a first-term Republican, shown at left.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesAt this community college just a few hundred feet from his congressional district border, Mr. Lawler nodded politely when the president mentioned him while onstage on Wednesday. “I don’t want to get him in trouble by saying anything nice about him — or negative about him,” Mr. Biden said jokingly. “But thanks for coming, Mike. Thanks for being here. It’s the way we used to do it.”Speaking with reporters after the speech, Mr. Lawler said that he and Mr. Biden had a “very cordial” and “very frank” conversation backstage before the event. “He told me he wants me to know he wasn’t coming here to put pressure on me in any way,” said Mr. Lawler, who seemed to welcome the president’s remarks onstage about him not being a MAGA Republican. “You heard his comments today. I don’t think he put too much pressure on me.”Mr. Lawler reaffirmed his vote for Mr. McCarthy’s legislation. “We need to get our fiscal house in order,” he said. “And so yes, spending needs to be tied to the debt ceiling. And that is the message I conveyed to the president.” But he repeatedly called for a bipartisan solution.Local Democrats were frustrated that the president wooed Mr. Lawler rather than assail him. Mondaire Jones, a former congressman positioning himself to challenge Mr. Lawler next year, said after the speech that Mr. Lawler had done nothing to justify being described “as not being a MAGA Republican.” Mr. Jones added: “He has voted for everything Kevin McCarthy has asked him to vote for at the request of the MAGA extremists.”Indeed, Republicans seized on Mr. Biden’s comments to rebut the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s attacks on the G.O.P. congressman. “Despite the D.C.C.C.’s repeated lies regarding Congressman Lawler’s positions,” the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement, “Lawler is a pragmatic member of Congress who is working to negotiate and avoid a government default.” More

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    How Past Debt Limit Crises Shaped Biden’s No-Negotiation Stance

    Battles in 2011 and 2013 taught President Biden not to lean on a House speaker who has little room to negotiate and to keep debt ceiling talks separate from the budget.As a debt limit crisis loomed in 2011, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. described early negotiations with Republicans as civil, at one point suggesting that the process was about finding out who was willing to trade their side’s bicycle for the other side’s golf clubs.The genteel vibe came to a halt that summer, when Speaker John A. Boehner walked away from a deal because he was not able to wrangle the Republicans in his caucus. Months later, congressional leaders agreed to raise the debt ceiling and cut trillions in federal spending to avoid default.The bitter compromise convinced Mr. Biden of two things, according to a half-dozen current and former advisers: Do not negotiate with a speaker who cannot reach a deal — Mr. Boehner’s caucus was arguably less radical than the current bloc of House Republicans — and do not turn the process of avoiding government default into a discussion about budgeting.“That was kind of a terrifying transition, because all of the sudden you’re negotiating over whether or not you’re going to default,” Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama, recalled of the 2011 saga.Mr. Lew added, “It left you with the real sense that this could just as easily have failed.”Twelve years later, the government is again at risk of defaulting on its debt for the first time, and Republicans in the House are again demanding spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to raise the debt limit.. Faced with the highest-stakes economic obstacle of his presidency and left with the searing memory of Obama-era fights, Mr. Biden has held firm that the discussion over raising the $31.4 trillion debt limit must take place separately from spending negotiations, advisers say.That has not always been the case. Republicans have pointed out in recent weeks that, as a senator, Mr. Biden railed against budget deficits during the Reagan presidency. In 1984, he presented a proposal to freeze federal spending for a year. He said his plan would “shock the living devil out of everyone in the U.S. Senate,” but it went nowhere.And as vice president, Mr. Biden tied the debt limit and budget issues in 2011, when he was negotiating for the Obama administration. In remarks to reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Biden suggested that he only did that because he had been instructed to get a deal done.“I got a call that morning at 6 o’clock saying that the Republican leader would only talk to me, and there was no time left,” he said. “And so I sat down, and I got instructions from the White House to settle it. And that was my job. But I had no notice.”In the spring of 2011, Mr. Biden and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders met frequently to hash out their differences. In early meetings, the group gathered at Blair House, where foreign dignitaries stay when they visit Washington. That summer, Mr. Boehner broke off negotiations, in large part because rank-and-file Republicans would not agree to raise taxes on the wealthy. A complex deal was reached weeks later, leaving Mr. Obama to explain to Democratic voters why he was not able to raise taxes and had agreed to at least $2.4 trillion in spending cuts.According to Mr. Biden’s aides, the scar tissue remains.The second debt ceiling battle of the Obama presidency, in 2013, was another test of a divided government: Mr. Obama flatly refused to negotiate, and Republicans, suffering from plunging poll numbers and the political toll of a downgrade in the country’s credit rating, eventually backed down.Mr. Biden has since argued that there should be no strings attached to raising the federal debt limit, which is the cap on the amount of money that the United States is authorized to borrow to fund the government and meet its financial obligations, including paying out social safety net programs and funding the salaries of the armed forces.Biden aides point out that the obvious: Relations between Republicans and Democrats have become even more fraught in the past decade. The last time a divided government threatened to take debt limit negotiations to the brink, Twitter was still nascent, and the idea of a President Donald J. Trump was little more than a sideshow.Now, in an era in which a large group of House Republicans remains loyal to Mr. Trump and would like to inflict pain on Mr. Biden as a matter of political principle, there is little compromise to be found on matters of substance, including the budget.“When your demand is keep the economy from falling off, and their demand is everything else, how do you meet the middle on that?” Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said in an interview. “My recollection is that everyone believed that we would never go down that path again.”Republicans argue that, rather than taking the nation’s debt obligations hostage, they are responding to Democrats who have long been blind to the ballooning interest costs that accompany the debt. President Biden emphasized the consequences of a potential default with congressional leaders during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, his advisers said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn a meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday, several advisers said, the president tried to emphasize the consequences of default and to get leaders to agree that it must be avoided at all costs. But Biden administration officials acknowledge that even if everyone agrees default must be avoided, working back from there will be the painful part.“There’s a very big gap between where the president is and where the Republicans are,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who has warned that the United States could default as soon as June 1, said on Monday.Mr. Biden said that he had asked the group to meet again on Friday, and that staff members would meet throughout the week. Two advisers said they expected similar meetings would take place regularly. Still, officials on both sides are not overly optimistic that a painless agreement will be reached in the short term.On Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy said that he “didn’t find progress” in the meeting and criticized the president’s suggestion that he may look at invoking a clause in the 14th Amendment that would compel the federal government to continue issuing new debt should the government run out of cash.“I would think you’re kind of a failure in working with people across the sides of the aisle or working with your own party to get something done,” Mr. McCarthy said.Mr. Biden and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, stay in regular contact, aides say, but the president’s advisers are reluctant to pin hopes on Mr. McConnell finding a way out of the debt ceiling morass.The president also has an untested Democratic ally in Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, who would need to marshal the votes necessary to deliver on any compromise. (Mr. Pfeiffer pointed out that during past debates, Mr. McConnell has swooped in at the last minute, “when he has the most leverage,” reaching an agreement “that is basically enough for him, it passes, then he leaves town.”)On Tuesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he was not interested in reaching any sort of short-term deal that would avert default.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThere will be little common ground over the budget. Mr. Biden wants to expand federal spending and reduce future debt by taxing corporations and high earners, a plan his administration argues could reduce the growth in the deficit by some $3 trillion over the next decade. Republicans want to extend the tax cuts approved by Mr. Trump, which would expire at the end of 2025.Late last month, Mr. McCarthy pushed a spending bill through that would cut deep into the president’s domestic agenda and slash discretionary spending, though Republicans have not outlined what might be cut and why. Since then, the Biden White House has been happy to fill the void, accusing Republicans of wanting to cut everything from veterans’ health care spending to Social Security. (Mr. McCarthy has called this a “lie.”)Ahead of the next meeting, the president’s advisers said they did not expect Mr. Biden’s message to change but suggested that both sides would have to make concessions. Mr. Biden’s comment on Tuesday that he might be willing to support rescinding unspent coronavirus relief funds — and fulfilling a Republican demand — could be the sort of compromise that would prevent talks from calcifying.But Mr. Biden’s aides also expect him to stress the political stakes for Republicans over the next few weeks should they refuse to budge on the debt limit. He will do so not just from the White House but from congressional districts.On Wednesday, the president was in the Hudson Valley region of New York, where Representative Marc Molinaro, a Republican whose district includes parts of the area, has accused him of playing a “game of chicken.” More

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    Inflation Slowed in April, Marking 10th Month of Moderation

    Price increases cooled, capping months of declines. The details held hints of hope.Inflation slowed for a 10th straight month in April, a closely watched report on Wednesday showed, good news for American families struggling under the burden of higher costs and for policymakers in Washington as they try to wrangle rapid price increases.The Consumer Price Index climbed 4.9 percent in April from a year earlier, less than the 5 percent that economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected. Inflation has come down notably from a peak just above 9 percent last summer, though it has remained far higher than the 2 percent annual gains that were normal before the pandemic.Cheaper prices for airline tickets, new cars and groceries including eggs and produce helped to pull inflation lower last month even as gas prices and rents climbed briskly. In an important shift, prices for some services slowed — a positive for the Federal Reserve, which has been raising interest rates to slow the economy and wrestle inflation lower. Central bankers have been watching services costs carefully in part because they have been proving stubborn.The report also provided welcome news for President Biden. Inflation has plagued voters for more than two years now, weighing on the president’s approval ratings. As prices climb less dramatically with each passing month, they may become a less pressing concern.Yet economists warned against overstating the progress: While inflation is showing positive signs of cooling, a chunk of the decline since last summer has come as supply chains have healed. With that low-hanging fruit gone, it could be a long and bumpy path back to a normal inflation rate.“Inflation is still sticky; I don’t think that the Fed is going to look at this and cut rates, or heave an especially big sigh of relief,” said Priya Misra, head of global rates research at TD Securities. “Not so fast. We can’t draw the conclusion that the inflation problem is over.”Even so, stock prices jumped in response to the data as investors — who tend to prefer lower interest rates — greeted it as good news for the Fed.After stripping out food and fuel to get a sense of the underlying trend in price increases — what economists call a core measure — consumer prices climbed 5.5 percent from a year earlier, a slight deceleration from 5.6 percent in the previous reading.And a closely watched measure of services prices outside of housing costs pulled back even more meaningfully. That was an encouraging sign that a stubborn component of inflation is finally on the verge of cracking, but it was also driven partly by a moderation in travel expenses that might not last, said Laura Rosner-Warburton, senior economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives.That slowdown offered “a little bit of good news, but also probably a little bit of a head fake,” she said.While inflation has been gradually cooling for months, it has remained too elevated for policymakers.Higher Prices for Services Are Now Driving InflationBreakdown of the inflation rate, by category

    Note: The services category excludes energy services, and the goods category excludes food and energy goods.Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; New York Times analysisBy The New York TimesMuch of the slowing in price increases has come as supply chain bottlenecks that emerged during the depths of the pandemic have cleared up, allowing goods shortages to ease. Energy prices have also moderated after a surge in summer 2022 that was tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.But underlying trends that could keep inflation persistently high over time have remained intact, including unusually strong wage growth, which could prod companies to try to charge more.That is one reason Fed officials have been paying such close attention to service prices: They tend to be more responsive to strength in the economy, and they can be difficult to slow down once they pick up.There are reasons to hope for more measured services inflation in coming months. Rents have begun to climb more slowly in market-based trackers, which should begin to show up in the official inflation data.But the question is whether the Fed has slowed the economy enough for other service prices — for things like travel, manicures, child care and health care — to follow suit.Central bankers have raised interest rates over the past year at the fastest pace since the 1980s to slow lending and weigh down growth, lifting borrowing costs above 5 percent as of this month.Those increases have made it more expensive to borrow money to buy a house or expand a business. As growth cools and companies compete less aggressively for workers, wage growth has already begun to slow. That chain reaction is expected to sap demand, which could make it harder for firms to increase prices without scaring away customers.But the full effect of the Fed’s moves is still playing out. The fallout could be intensified by a series of recent high-profile bank failures, which might make other lenders nervous and prompt them to pull back on extending credit.And Congress is approaching a showdown over raising the nation’s debt limit, which could also shape the outlook: If markets panic as Democrats and Republicans struggle to reach a deal and investors worry that the American government will fail to pay its bills, that could trickle out to hurt the economy.Democrats have warned that the brinkmanship could undermine progress in a strong economy with slowing inflation, while Republicans argued on Wednesday that rapid inflation is evidence that they are correct to demand spending cuts.With so many factors poised to weaken the economy, Fed officials are now assessing whether they need to raise borrowing costs further, or whether their moves so far will suffice to guide inflation back to normal. John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, told reporters in New York on Tuesday that the Fed’s next decision — to lift rates or to pause — would hinge on incoming data.“We’ll adjust policy going forward based on what we see out there,” he said.Policymakers will receive the consumer price report for May on June 13, the day before their decision, but officials typically give markets at least a hint of what they might do with rates ahead of time. Given that, central bankers are likely to pay close attention to the April inflation report.Fed officials will also receive May jobs data and a reading of the personal consumption expenditures price index — the measure they officially target in their 2 percent inflation goal, but one that comes out with more of a delay — before their next meeting. The personal consumption measure builds partly on the data from the consumer price report.For now, the fresh inflation figures probably aren’t enough to convince policymakers that they should change course and reduce interest rates soon, economists said.“It probably keeps them on track to pause at the next meeting,” Ms. Rosner-Warburton said. More

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    Traders raise the chances for a Fed rate cut following April inflation report

    Traders on Wednesday raised the chances of a September interest rate cut to close to 80%.
    That came even with inflation still running well above the Fed’s 2% target and “sticky” prices stubbornly high.
    Policymakers likely will continue to douse those expectations in future months, even if they choose not to raise rates.

    Shoppers during the grand opening of a Costco Wholesale store in Kyle, Texas, on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
    Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Even with inflation running well above the Federal Reserve’s goal, markets became more convinced Wednesday that the central bank will be cutting interest rates by as soon as September.
    The annual inflation rate as measured by the consumer price index fell to 4.9% in April, its lowest level in two years but still more than double the Fed’s 2% target.

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    Still, it was enough for traders to raise the chances of a September rate cut to near 80%, according to the CME Group’s Fed Watch tracker of prices in the fed funds futures market. In fact, the October fed funds contract implied a policy rate of 4.84%, or nearly a full quarter point below the current effective rate of 5.08%.
    Among Wall Street analysts and economists, though, the case for a rate cut remains shaky.
    “The timing of a first rate cut will depend both on how quickly inflation slows and how quickly the job market becomes less tight,” said Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank. A softer employment picture and further declines in the inflation rate “would allow the Fed to begin reducing interest rates as early as this fall.”
    However, the bar seems high for a rate cut, even if central bankers decide they can halt increases for now.
    New York Fed President John Williams, an influential policymaker and voter on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, said Tuesday he doesn’t expect that policy will ease at all this year, though he left open the possibility beyond that.

    “In my forecast, we need to keep a restrictive stance of policy in place for quite some time to make sure we really bring inflation down,” he said during an appearance before the Economic Club of New York. “I do not see in my baseline forecast any reason to cut interest rates this year.”
    Still, markets are pricing in multiple cuts for 2023, totaling 0.75 percentage point, that would take the Fed’s benchmark rate down to a target range of 4.25%-4.5%. The central bank raised its fed funds rate last week by a quarter point, to 5.0%-5.25%, its 10th increase since March 2022.
    Policymakers likely will continue to douse those expectations for easier policy in future months, even if they choose not to raise rates.

    “That’s what they’re really pushing back on is our expectations in the market that they’re going to ease. But they’re not pushing the notion that the peak rate is going to be higher,” Paul McCulley, former Pimco managing director and currently senior fellow in financial macroeconomics at Cornell, said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
    “They’re going to sound quite hawkish until they get a lot of clean readings that we really have reached where we want to be,” said McCulley, using a market term for preferring higher rates and tighter monetary policy.
    The April CPI report provided mixed signals on where inflation is headed, with the core reading, excluding food and energy costs, holding fairly steady at 5.5% annually.
    Moreover, an Atlanta Fed gauge of “sticky CPI,” measuring prices that don’t tend to move a lot, was only slightly lower at 6.5% in April. Flexible-price CPI, which measures more volatile items such as food and energy costs, rose to 1.9%, an increase of 0.3 percentage point.
    “The fact that Core inflation’s annualized pace remains well above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% and shows no signs of trending downward is critical,” PNC senior economist Kurt Rankin wrote in response to the CPI data. “Decreases on this front will be necessary before the Fed’s monetary policy rhetoric can be expected to change.”
    Before the CPI release, markets had been pricing in about a 20% chance of a rate hike at the June 13-14 FOMC meeting. Following the meeting, that probability fell to just 8.5%.
    That came even though “the previous downward trend has temporarily stalled” for inflation, wrote Andrew Hunter, deputy chief economist at Capital Economics.
    “We don’t think that will persuade the Fed to hike again at the June FOMC meeting, but it does suggest a risk that rates will need to remain high for a little longer than we have assumed,” Hunter said. More

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    Inflation rose 4.9% in April from a year ago, less than expectations

    The consumer price index rose 0.4% last month, pushed higher by rising shelter, used vehicle and gas prices. The increase was in line with Wall Street expectations.
    On an annual basis, the inflation rate was 4.9%, slightly less than the estimate and providing some hope that the trend is lower.
    For workers, real average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, rose 0.1% for the month but were still down 0.5% from a year ago.

    A widely followed measure of inflation rose in April, though the pace of the increase provided some hope that the cost of living will head lower later this year.
    The consumer price index, which measures the cost of a broad swath of goods and services, increased 0.4% for the month, in line with the Dow Jones estimate, according to a Labor Department report Wednesday.

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    However, that equated to an annual increase of 4.9%, slightly less than the 5% estimate.
    Excluding volatile food and energy categories, core CPI rose 0.4% monthly and 5.5% from a year ago, both in line with expectations.

    Increases in shelter, gasoline and used vehicles pushed the index higher, and were offset somewhat by declines in prices for fuel oil, new vehicles and food at home.
    Markets reacted positively to the news, with futures turning positive as Treasury yields were lower.
    “Today’s reports suggests that the Fed’s campaign to quell inflation is working, albeit more slowly than they would like,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial. “But for financial markets … today’s inflation print is a net positive.”

    Inflation has been persistent despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring down prices. Starting in March 2022, the central bank has enacted 10 consecutive interest rate increases totaling 5 percentage points, taking benchmark borrowing rates to their highest level in nearly 16 years.
    The CPI reading has cooled considerably since peaking out around 9% in June 2022. However, inflation still has held well above the Fed’s 2% annual target.
    The report provides both good and bad news on the inflation front as Fed officials weigh their next move on rates.
    Shelter costs, which make up about one-third of the CPI weighting, increased another 0.4% on the month and are now up 8.1% from a year ago. The monthly gain represented a step down from previous months’ increases but was still indicative that a key inflation driver is rising.
    At the same time, the 4.4% jump in prices for used cars and trucks reverses recent declines. Food prices, though, were flat while the energy index rose 0.6%, boosted by a 3% gain in gasoline.
    Of the six grocery store indexes the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to compute food prices, four showed declines. Milk, for instance, fell 2%, the biggest monthly drop since February 2015. Egg prices, one of the biggest gainers in the food index over the past year, fell 1.5%, taking the annual gain down to 21.4%.
    For workers, real average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, rose 0.1% for the month but were still down 0.5% from a year ago, the BLS said in a separate report.
    Following the reports, traders lowered odds that the Fed would raise interest rates at the June meeting to 20%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tracker of pricing in the fed funds futures market.
    The CPI reading comes just days after the BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls increased by 253,000 in April, above expectations and indicative that the labor market is still hot despite Fed efforts to cool demand.
    In approving its latest rate hike last week, the Fed removed an indication that future hikes are warranted and instead shifted to language saying that decisions will be based on incoming data.
    The Labor Department on Thursday will release the April producer price index, a gauge of wholesale prices on final demand goods and services. That report is expected to show a 0.3% headline increase and a 0.2% core gain. More

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    Fed’s John Williams says rates could be increased if inflation doesn’t come down

    New York Fed President John Williams cautioned that “it will take time for the FOMC’s actions to restore balance to the economy and return inflation to our 2% target.”
    The current problems in the banking industry and their impact will factor into Williams’ policy outlook, he said.
    “We haven’t said we’re done raising rates,” he told the Economic Club of New York.

    John Williams, Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, speaks at an event in New York, November 6, 2019.
    Carlo Allegri | Reuters

    NEW YORK — New York Federal Reserve President John Williams on Tuesday cautioned that interest rate increases will take a while to work their way through the economy before inflation returns to an acceptable level.
    The central bank official gave no forecast for where he sees policy headed but said he doesn’t expect inflation to return to the Fed’s 2% goal until the next two years. Should inflation not come down, he said the Fed always has the option to raise rates.

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    He added that unemployment is likely to rise to a 4%-4.5% range, from its current 54-year low of 3.4%.
    “Because of the lag between policy actions and their effects, it will take time for the [Federal Open Market Committee’s] actions to restore balance to the economy and return inflation to our 2% target,” Williams said in prepared remarks at the Economic Club of New York.
    Williams spoke six days after the FOMC voted to raise its benchmark rate another quarter percentage point to a target range of 5%-5.25%. In its post-meeting statement, the committee hinted it could pause rate hikes, though it said officials will be taking a variety of factors into account when determining how to proceed.
    The committee removed a key phrase from the statement that had indicated additional rate hikes would be appropriate. Williams, an FOMC voter, said that decision is now a matter of what the incoming data says.
    “First of all, we haven’t said we’re done raising rates,” Williams told CNBC’s Sara Eisen during a Q&A session after his speech. “We’re going to make sure we’re going to achieve our goals and we’re going to assess what’s happening in our economy and make the decision based on that data.”

    “I do not see in my baseline forecast, any reason to cut interest rates this year,” he said, adding that additional rate hikes would be possible if the data doesn’t cooperate.
    The current problems in the banking industry and their impact will factor into Williams’ policy outlook, he said.
    “I will be particularly focused on assessing the evolution of credit conditions and their effects on the outlook for growth, employment and inflation,” Williams said.
    Some positive signs Williams cited include moderation in longer-term inflation expectations and a cooling in demand for labor that has heated the jobs market and put upward pressure on wages, which nonetheless have failed to keep up with cost-of-living increases.
    He also said clogged labor chains, which have been a major inflation contributor, have “improved considerably” over time. More

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    in Economy

    The Debt Limit Workarounds: The Coin, the Constitution, Premium Bonds

    As Congress hurtles toward a debt limit showdown, ways to work around it are garnering attention.Move over, trillion-dollar coin, there is a new debt limit workaround in town — and this one sounds more sophisticated, which some of its proponents have suggested could make it more likely to work.For years, debt limit skeptics have argued that the United States can get around the cap on how much it can borrow by minting a large-denomination coin, depositing it in the government’s account at the Federal Reserve. Officials could then use the resulting money to pay the country’s bills. The maneuver would exploit a quirk in U.S. law, which gives the Treasury secretary wide discretion when it comes to minting platinum coins.But there have always been challenges with the idea: Treasury has expressed little appetite. It is unclear whether the Fed would take the coin. It just sounds unconventional to the point of absurdity. And now, some are arguing for a fancier-sounding alternative: premium bonds.The government typically funds itself by issuing debt in the form of financial securities called bonds and bills. They are worth a set amount after a fixed period of time — for example, $1,000 in 10 years — and they pay “coupons” twice a year in between. Typically, those coupon rates are set near market interest rates.But in the premium bond idea, the government would renew old, expiring bonds at higher coupon rates. Doing so would not technically add to the nation’s debt — if the government previously had a 10-year bond worth $1,000 outstanding, it would still have a 10-year bond worth $1,000 outstanding. But investors would pay more to hold a bond that pays $7 a year than one that pays $3.50, so promising a higher interest rate would allow Treasury to raise more money.Would those higher interest rates, which would cost the government more money, pose a problem? Not technically. The debt limit applies to the face value of outstanding federal government debt ($1,000 in our example), not future promises to pay interest.And the idea could also come in a slightly different flavor. The government could issue bonds that pay regular coupons, but which never pay back principal, or perpetual bonds. People would buy them for the long-term cash stream, and they would not add to the principal of debt outstanding.The premium bond idea has gained support from some big names. The economic commentator Matthew Yglesias brought it up in January, the Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine has written about it, and The New York Times columnist and Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman made a case for it this week.But even some proponents of premium bonds acknowledge that it could face legal challenges or damage the United States’ reputation in the eyes of investors. Plus, their design and issuance would have to happen fast.“Normally, Treasury makes changes slowly, with lots of consulting of bond market participants and advance announcement of auctions,” said Joseph E. Gagnon, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, adding that the government might have to offer a discount.But, he added, it “sure beats defaulting” and he “would argue it is better than not paying workers or retirees.”While the premium bond idea might come in different packaging, it has a lot of similarities with the coin idea. Either plan would exploit a loophole to add to government coffers without actually lifting the debt limit. Because both are seen as gimmicky, it could be hard for either to become reality.Of all the options the government could use to unilaterally get around the debt ceiling, “they are the least likely in our opinion,” said Chris Krueger, a policy analyst at TD Cowen.But a workaround that hinges on the 14th Amendment could garner broader support, Mr. Krueger said. That would leverage a clause in the Constitution that says that the validity of public debt should not be questioned.Some legal scholars contend that language overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which currently caps federal debt at $31.4 trillion. The idea is that the government’s responsibility to pay what it owes would trump the debt limit rules — so the debt limit could be ignored.It would not be a perfect solution: The move would draw an immediate court challenge and could sow uncertainty in the bond market, even its proponents acknowledge. Still, some White House officials have looked into the option. More