Economy

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Japan’s currency has run up its biggest monthly gain against the dollar this year, reflecting growing expectations that the Bank of Japan will be forced to tighten monetary policy just as the US Federal Reserve is signalling rate cuts. The yen has climbed 7 per cent against the dollar since the middle of November to trade at ¥141.59, its strongest level since July, including a 4.4 per cent rise this month.  “It’s been a big move by any standard,” said Chris Turner, head of global markets at ING. “It started with the whole turn in the dollar when the market was turning more dovish on the Fed and then there were stories suggesting the Bank of Japan was ready to lift interest rates.” The move has helped ease the pressure from rising import prices, which have driven up living costs for consumers this year, but is a headwind for Japanese exporters.The yen was turbocharged this week after the Federal Reserve surprised markets by signalling it would cut interest rates next year. BoJ governor Kazuo Ueda met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week and told the country’s parliament that managing monetary policy “will become even more challenging from the year-end and heading into next year”. However, the BoJ is widely expected to keep interest rates at minus 0.1 per cent next week at its final monetary policy meeting of the year. Traders in swaps markets are betting that the bank will scrap its negative interest rate in April or June next year. “There is ample evidence now that inflation pressures are embedding in the Japanese economy and that Japan’s negative interest rate policy is inconsistent with the economic reality,” said Salman Ahmed, global head of macro at Fidelity International.The rapid decline of US bond yields eases the upward pressure on Japanese yields as the BoJ gradually unwinds its unconventional policy of holding down its benchmark borrowing costs. The spread — or gap — between 10-year US and Japanese government bond yields has narrowed to 3.2 percentage points, down from more than 4 percentage points in October. Michael Metcalfe, head of global market strategy at State Street, custodian to $40tn of assets, said fund managers had been adding to their yen positions over the past fortnight on speculation that the BoJ will soon tighten policy. “The yen offers an attractive combination of valuation and the possibility of monetary policy becoming more, not less, supportive,” Metcalfe said, adding that the dollar was 40 per cent overvalued compared with the yen based on measures of purchasing power parity. Some currency strategists believe the yen will continue to strengthen next year, with the gap between US and Japanese interest rates expected to narrow. Many investors have been using the yen to fund so-called carry trades whereby they would borrow the yen and lend in dollars. “The possibility that the Fed could ease policy in 2024 while the Bank of Japan begins to tighten puts the dollar-yen carry trade under pressure,” said Erik Norland, senior economist at CME Group.“In the past, the yen has been subject to rapid upward moves when carry trades liquidate.”  More

Joe Biden’s upbeat forecasts for the US economy have been validated by the Federal Reserve’s signal that it will consider interest rate cuts next year, delivering respite to American households through lower borrowing costs after two years of high inflation.For months, Biden administration officials have been betting on a “soft landing” — one in which inflation would decline without any big rise in unemployment or a recession — as a fundamental feature of its economic record heading into the 2024 presidential election.That expectation was validated by the US central bank this week, as it shifted towards a more dovish posture. The Fed indicated that its cycle of monetary tightening, which began in early 2022 to fight rapidly building inflation, had most likely ended, as officials forecast that its benchmark interest rate would be brought down by 0.75 percentage points next year from its current range of 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent. The Biden White House has vowed to respect the Fed’s independence, and it rarely comments on monetary policy. But earlier this month on a visit to Las Vegas, the president said he was “not encouraging the Fed to raise rates” — as he praised the “sweet spot” reached by the US economy with steady jobs growth, rising wages and lower inflation. On Friday, Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council at the White House, said “recent data certainly give us more evidence that the width of the runway for a soft landing has gotten much bigger”. She also pointed to “a much more positive view about what the economy is likely to look like over the course of the next year” in financial markets. “That is bringing down mortgage rates in a way that we also really welcome. We know housing affordability continues to be a squeeze for so many Americans,” Brainard said. Since the Fed’s meeting, US government bond yields have touched multi-month lows, with the 10-year Treasury note, which serves as a global benchmark, trading below 4 per cent for the first time since August.The prospect of the Fed shifting to lower rates will not only help potential homeowners and the housing market, but could ease costs across the economy, including for business investments. Jennifer Harris, a former Biden White House economic official, said it was vital for rates to come down for the huge manufacturing incentives enacted over the past years to be completed.“The rest of the economy could well muddle through on ‘higher for longer’, but that is not true for the delicate set of investments that are incredibly capital intensive that we just passed historic legislation to stand up.” Harris would like to see the Fed cut rates at an even faster rate than projected by its officials this week. The trajectory of the economy is important for Biden on the cusp of an election year. The better outlook from the Fed has also chimed with a record high in the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index, which the Biden campaign has been touting. While the vote will be in November, perceptions of the economy are often cemented earlier in the year, and the president is trying to reverse dismally low approval ratings on his handling of the economy. In his latest press conference this week, Jay Powell, the Fed chair, said politics would not be a factor in the central bank’s thinking. “We don’t think about political events. We don’t think about politics,” he said. “We’ll do the things that we think are right for the economy when we think [it] is the right time. That’s what we always do.”The Fed’s turn towards essentially calling the peak in interest rates and beginning to entertain rate cuts stemmed primarily from officials’ shifting stance on the inflation outlook. According to this week’s projections, a majority now expect price pressures to ease more rapidly in 2024 and 2025 than just a couple months’ prior before reaching a level consistent with the central bank’s longstanding 2 per cent target the year after that. At the same time, officials forecast the economy will continue to grow over 1 per cent in 2024 and 2025, with a very minimal uptick in the unemployment rate to 4.1 per cent. It stands at 3.7 per cent. But in a telling sign, Powell made clear that safeguarding the soft landing that he and other officials have been trying to engineer was also an important consideration for officials.“We’re aware of the risk that we would hang on too long,” he said. “We know that that’s a risk, and we’re very focused on not making that mistake.” Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior US economist at BNP Paribas, said she expected the Fed to be guided by the inflation data, which could mean it holds off until May to begin lowering borrowing costs. Over the course of 2024, she forecasts the federal funds rate to decline by 1.5 percentage points before falling below 3 per cent by the end of 2025. “They will not hesitate to cut faster if they see a significant deterioration in economic activity,” Shulyatyeva said.Andrew Patterson, senior international economist at Vanguard, said one risk might be if the Fed proceeds to slash interest rates before inflation was well and truly vanquished.“If they do end up cutting pre-emptively . . . they’re risking a reacceleration in inflation and then an eventual recession as a result of that because they are going to have to hike [again],” he said. More

Economists offer alternatives to financial safeguards created when the U.S. was the pre-eminent superpower and climate change wasn’t on the agenda.Martin Guzman was a college freshman at La Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, in 2001 when a debt crisis prompted default, riots and a devastating depression. A dazed middle class suffered ruin, as the International Monetary Fund insisted that the government make misery-inducing budget cuts in exchange for a bailout.Watching Argentina unravel inspired Mr. Guzman to switch majors and study economics. Nearly two decades later, when the government was again bankrupt, it was Mr. Guzman as finance minister who negotiated with I.M.F. officials to restructure a $44 billion debt, the result of an earlier ill-conceived bailout.Today he is one of a number of prominent economists and world leaders who argue that the ambitious framework created at the end of World War II to safeguard economic growth and stability, with the I.M.F. and World Bank as its pillars, is failing in its mission.Martin Guzman, a former finance minister in Argentina, is among the economists and world leaders who argue that the framework created at the end of World War II to safeguard economic growth and stability is not working.Nathalia Angarita for The New York TimesJavier Milei, the newly elected president of Argentina, at an election event in Salta, Argentina, in October. He has described himself as an “anarcho-capitalist.”Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesThe current system “contributes to a more inequitable and unstable global economy,” said Mr. Guzman, who resigned last year after a rift within the government.The repayment that Mr. Guzman negotiated was the 22nd arrangement between Argentina and the I.M.F. Even so, the country’s economic tailspin has only increased with an annual inflation rate of more than 140 percent, growing lines at soup kitchens and a new, self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” president, Javier Milei, who this week devalued the currency by 50 percent.The I.M.F. and World Bank have aroused complaints from the left and right ever since they were created. But the latest critiques pose a more profound question: Does the economic framework devised eight decades ago fit the economy that exists today, when new geopolitical conflicts collide with established economic relationships and climate change poses an imminent threat?Volunteers serving free meals in Buenos Aires. Argentina’s economy is in a tailspin, with growing lines at soup kitchens.Rodrigo Abd/Associated PressProtests in Buenos Aires in 2001. A debt crisis in Argentina led to default, riots and a devastating depression.Fabian Gredillas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis 21st-century clash of ideas about how to fix a system created for a 20th-century world is one of the most consequential facing the global economy.The I.M.F. was set up in 1944 at a conference in Bretton Woods, N.H., to help rescue countries in financial distress, while the World Bank’s focus was reducing poverty and investing in social development. The United States was the pre-eminent economic superpower, and scores of developing nations in Africa and Asia had not yet gained independence. The foundational ideology — later known as the “Washington Consensus” — held that prosperity depended on unhindered trade, deregulation and the primacy of private investment.“Nearly 80 years later, the global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional and unjust,” António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, said this summer at a summit in Paris. “Even the most fundamental goals on hunger and poverty have gone into reverse after decades of progress.”The world today is geopolitically fragmented. More than three-quarters of the current I.M.F. and World Bank countries were not at Bretton Woods. China’s economy, in ruins at the end of World War II, is now the world’s second-largest, an engine of global growth and a crucial hub in the world’s industrial machine and supply chain. India, then still a British colony, is one of the top five economies in the world.A session of the United Nations Monetary Conference in Bretton Woods, N.H., on July 4, 1944. Delegates from 44 countries are seated at the long tables.Abe Fox/Associated Press, via Associated PressAntónio Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, said this summer that “the global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional, and unjust.”Martin Divisek/EPA, via ShutterstockThe once vaunted “Washington Consensus” has fallen into disrepute, with a greater recognition of how inequality and bias against women hamper growth, as well as the need for collective action on the climate.The mismatch between institution and mission has sharpened in recent years. Pounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, spiking food and energy prices related to the war in Ukraine, and higher interest rates, low- and middle-income countries are swimming in debt and facing slow growth. The size of the global economy as well as the scope of the problems have grown immensely, but funding of the I.M.F. and World Bank has not kept pace.Resolving debt crises is also vastly more complicated now that China and legions of private creditors are involved, instead of just a handful of Western banks.The World’s Bank’s own analyses outline the extent of the economic problems. “For the poorest countries, debt has become a nearly paralyzing burden,” a report released Wednesday concluded. Countries are forced to spend money on interest payments instead of investing in public health, education and the environment.An assembly line at the electric vehicle manufacturer Nio in Hefei, China. China’s economy was in ruins at the end of World War II but is now the world’s second largest and an engine of global growth.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesGita Gopinath, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said of the current financial system, “We have countries strategically competing with amorphous rules and without an effective referee.”Jalal Morchidi/EPA, via ShutterstockAnd that debt doesn’t account for the trillions of dollars that developing countries will need to mitigate the ravages of climate change.Then there are the tensions between the United States and China, and Russia and Europe and its allies. It is harder to resolve debt crises or finance major infrastructure without bumping up against security concerns — like when the World Bank awarded the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei a contract that turned out to violate U.S. sanctions policy, or when China has resisted debt restructuring agreements.“The global rules-based system was not built to resolve national security-based trade conflicts,” Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director of the I.M.F., said Monday in a speech to the International Economic Association in Colombia. “We have countries strategically competing with amorphous rules and without an effective referee.”The World Bank and I.M.F. have made changes. The fund has moderated its approach to bailouts, replacing austerity with the idea of sustainable debt. The bank this year significantly increased the share of money going to climate-related projects. But critics maintain that the fixes so far are insufficient.“The way in which they have evolved and adapted is much slower than the way the global economy evolved and adapted,” Mr. Guzman said.Argentina’s new president devalued the currency by 50 percent this week.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesA vegetables shop in Almagro in Buenos Aires. Argentina’s economy is South America’s second largest.Anita Pouchard Serra for The New York Times‘Time to Revisit Bretton Woods’Argentina, South America’s second-largest economy, may be the global economic system’s most notorious repeat failure, but it was Barbados, a tiny island nation in the Caribbean, that can be credited with turbocharging momentum for change.Mia Mottley, the prime minister, spoke out two years ago at the climate change summit in Glasgow and then followed up with the Bridgetown Initiative, a proposal to overhaul the way rich countries help poor countries adapt to climate change and avoid crippling debt.“Yes, it is time for us to revisit Bretton Woods,” she said in a speech at last year’s climate summit in Egypt. Ms. Mottley argues that there has been a “fundamental breakdown” in a longstanding covenant between poor countries and rich ones, many of which built their wealth by exploiting former colonies. The most advanced industrialized countries also produce most of the emissions that are heating the planet and causing extreme floods, wildfires and droughts in poor countries.Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, the executive vice president of the African Center for Economic Transformation, in Ghana, said that even recent agreements to deal with debt like the 2020 Common Framework were created without input from developing nations.“We are calling for a voice and seat at the table,” Ms. Owusu-Gyamfi said, from her office in Accra, as she discussed a $3 billion I.M.F. bailout of Ghana.Yet if the fund and bank are focused on economic issues, they are essentially political creations that reflect the power of the countries that established, finance and manage them.And those countries are reluctant to cede that power. The United States, the only member with veto power, has the largest share of votes in part because of the size of its economy and financial contributions. It does not want to see its influence shrink and others’ — particularly China’s — grow.The impasse over reapportioning votes has hampered efforts to increase funding levels, which countries across the board agree need to be increased.A vegetable market in Accra, Ghana. “We are calling for a voice and seat at the table,” said Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, the executive vice president of the African Center for Economic Transformation in Ghana.Natalija Gormalova for The New York TimesCustomers at lunch in Buenos Aires. Mr. Guzman and others pushing for change argue that indebted countries need more grants and low-interest loans with long repayment timelines.Sarah Pabst for The New York Times‘Big Hole’ in How to Deal With DebtStill, as Mr. Guzman said, “even if there are no changes in governance, there could be changes in policies.”Emerging nations need enormous amounts of money to invest in public health, education, transport and climate resilience. But they are saddled with high borrowing costs because of the market’s often exaggerated perception of the risk they pose as borrowers.And because they are usually compelled to borrow in dollars or euros, their payments soar if the Federal Reserve and other central banks raise interest rates to combat inflation as they did in the 1980s and after the Covid pandemic.The proliferation of private lenders and variety of loan agreements have made debt negotiations impossibly complex, yet no international legal arbiter exists.Zambia defaulted on its external debt three years ago, and there is still no agreement because the I.M.F., China and bondholders are at odds.There’s a “big hole” in international governance when it comes to sovereign debt, said Paola Subacchi, an economist at the Global Policy Institute at Queen Mary University in London, because the rules don’t apply to private loans, whether from a hedge fund or China’s central bank. Often these creditors have an interest in drawing out the process to hold out for a better deal.Mr. Guzman and other economists have called for an international legal arbiter to adjudicate disputes related to sovereign debt.“Every country has adopted a bankruptcy law,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, “but internationally we don’t have one.”The United States, though, has repeatedly opposed the idea, saying it is unnecessary.Rescues, too, have proved to be problematic. Last-resort loans from the I.M.F. can end up adding to a country’s budgetary woes and undermining the economic recovery because interest rates are so high now, and borrowers must also pay hefty fees.Those like Mr. Guzman and Ms. Mottley pushing for change argue that indebted countries need significantly more grants and low-interest loans with long repayment timelines, along with a slate of other reforms.“The challenges are different today,” said Mr. Guzman. “Policies need to be better aligned with the mission.”Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, offered a proposal this year to overhaul the way rich countries help poor countries adapt to climate change and avoid crippling debt.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesFlash flooding in Bangladesh last year. The global economic framework was devised long before climate change posed an imminent threat to poor nations.Mushfiqul Alam/NurPhoto More

“Now targeting no earlier than Thursday, December 28 for Falcon Heavy to launch USSF-52 to orbit from Florida,” SpaceX said in a post on X on Friday, after it stood down on the launch earlier this week to perform additional system checkouts.The original plan to send the spacecraft to orbit late on Sunday was scrubbed due to poor weather conditions at Cape Canaveral, Florida. More

The reform had initially been approved by deputies in July, but had to be voted on again after the Senate made changes to the text before passing it last month.In the two required votes, as the reform is a constitutional amendment, lawmakers voted 371 to 121 and 365 to 118 to pass the bill, both well above the required 308 votes. The reform will now be signed into law in a joint session of Congress expected to take place next week.The eagerly anticipated reform, repeatedly attempted by previous administrations, is a central pillar of Lula’s plans to boost productivity and the potential growth of Latin America’s largest economy. It aims to simplify Brazil’s notoriously complex tax system, which imposes high compliance costs on businesses.The proposal consolidates five existing levies into a value-added tax (VAT) with distinct federal and regional rates, to be determined later through complementary bills. The full implementation of the new taxes is expected only in 2033. It also introduces a selective tax targeting products considered harmful to the environment and health.In contrast to the Senate version, the final text approved by the lower house excludes certain sectors the Senate had added to the list of those eligible for more advantageous tax schemes, such as sanitation services, highway concessions and air transportation services.The reform also shifts the tax base from the point of production to the point of consumption over a 50-year transition period starting in 2029, a change expected to favor Brazil’s wealthier and more populous states.To offset these changes, the reform introduces various funds and compensation mechanisms for states, many of which have been viewed with reservations by analysts due to their high fiscal cost over an extended period. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said on Friday he had started talks with Beijing on renewing a landmark scientific cooperation agreement, and while the deal needed to be modernized, prospects for a new one were uncertain.Controversy over the renewal of the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) – the first accord between the two countries signed in 1979 after the official establishment of diplomatic ties – has grown amid U.S. accusations of China’s theft of U.S. scientific and commercial achievements.The U.S. State Department in August sought a six-month extension to the pact that was set to expire that month in order to negotiate strengthened provisions with Beijing, which has eagerly expressed its desire for renewal. Burns told an audience at Washington’s Brookings Institution that the agreement was the “bedrock” of U.S.-China cooperation, but it did not account for advances such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, machine learning and quantum mathematics. “I met with the new (Chinese) minister of science and technology just a couple of weeks ago in Beijing and we are beginning a discussion with them on whether or not to extend it, to have a new agreement, and what would be the issues involved, and I think it’s complicated,” Burns said. “We put down our expectations that it had to be modernized, that it’s not a given that we’re going to agree. I think that both sides agree on that,” he said, adding that negotiations would proceed over the “next couple of months.”U.S. proponents of renewing the deal argue that without it the U.S. would lose valuable insight into China’s technological advances.However, some Republicans in the U.S. Congress have said it should be scrapped, citing concerns about industrial espionage, forced technology transfers and other tactics that could fuel China’s military modernization.Many analysts say at the very least the agreement must be reworked to safeguard U.S. innovation in a time of heightened strategic competition with China.U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping agreed at a summit in San Francisco in November to step up communication between their two governments after diplomatic relations sank to their lowest point earlier in the year, but the countries remain geopolitical rivals. More

(Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday defended its overhaul of rules for private funds, responding in a court filing to a lawsuit from six private equity and hedge fund trade groups.The trade lobbying groups in September sued the top U.S. markets regulator, saying the agency overstepped its authorities when adopting sweeping new expense and disclosure rules. The changes require private funds to issue a swath of new reports and to perform annual audits, as well as disclose certain fee structures. The funds said the new rules were arbitrary and capricious. The SEC said its filing on Friday that it had followed proper procedure in its rulemaking and that the private funds had not shown that the agency had exceeded its authority. The SEC said it was prepared to defend its case with oral arguments in court.SEC Chair Gary Gensler has previously said the rules will boost transparency and competition in a private funds sector accused by advocacy groups of opacity and conflicts of interest. Such funds oversee around $20 trillion in assets and have been accused by advocacy groups of opacity and conflicts of interest.Wall Street and their trade groups have kicked off a wave of lawsuits to fight a slew of new rules from Democratic President Joe Biden’s regulators. Industry executives have said firms are more willing to litigate than in the past because they see the regulations as ill-conceived and rushed. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. central bank can begin reducing interest rates “sometime in the third quarter” of 2024 if inflation falls as expected, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic said on Friday, pushing back against expectations of an imminent move but outlining a deliberative process that will gather steam in coming weeks.Bostic said he expects inflation, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, to end 2024 at around 2.4%, enough progress towards the Fed’s 2% target to warrant two quarter-percentage-point rate cuts over the second half of next year. “I’m not really feeling that this is an imminent thing,” Bostic said in an interview with Reuters, with policymakers still needing “several months” to accumulate enough data and confidence that inflation will continue to fall before moving away from the policy rate’s current 5.25%-5.50% range.But Bostic also said he has asked his staff to begin discussing principles and thresholds to help frame the debate. “We’ve got to figure out definitionally what the ‘neighborhood’ looks like” where the inflation outlook is such that rate cuts are warranted, Bostic said. “Over the next several weeks … I think we are going to start talking about that.”CAUTIOUS APPROACHBostic’s remarks put detail around a policy shift that the Fed began at its policy meeting this week, when officials agreed that, absent another inflation shock, the current policy rate is high enough to curb the price pressures they have been battling for two years. Investors have run with the comparatively dovish tone that Fed Chair Jerome Powell struck at a press conference after the end of the meeting on Wednesday, pushing down market-based interest rates and increasing bets the central bank will begin to reduce interest rates at its meeting in March.The comments from Bostic, a voting member of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) next year, are potentially telling in that regard. He was ready to stop raising rates earlier than his colleagues, saying as of this past June that he felt monetary policy was already restrictive enough – before the FOMC raised the policy rate by another quarter of a percentage point at its July meeting.Bostic also said that inflation has fallen faster than he anticipated since then, despite continued growth in an economy he feels will skirt any appreciable rise in the unemployment rate, delivering the “soft landing” hoped for by the Fed.But just as he was cautious about raising rates too far, Bostic said he will be cautious about cutting them too soon. He said he wants to be sure inflation is fully contained before lowering borrowing costs, and avoid being “surprised.” Indeed, his outlook for two 25-basis-point rate cuts is less than the 75 basis points or more in cuts seen by many of his colleagues.”We’ve been getting close to the neighborhood,” Bostic said, adding that he regarded the three- and six-month measures of inflation as “useful markers” for the discussion. Those measures currently stand at around 2.5% for the PCE price index excluding food and energy items, considered by many officials as an important guide to underlying inflation.But “I am going to try not to presuppose anything at this point,” he said. “We’ve been surprised throughout the pandemic on a number of fronts, some to the good and some to the bad. And so I just don’t want to get anchored too much.”BALANCED RISKS But Bostic said he wanted to be prepared to move more quickly, if needed, in an environment where he felt risks to the economy had become “fairly balanced” between inflation proving stronger than expected – the main worry of policymakers since 2021 – and a deeper-than-anticipated blow to jobs or growth.”The risk that inflation is going to spike has really, I think, declined significantly. It is not zero, but it is lower,” Bostic said, with the easing of price pressures allowing room to “think about the risks to both sides of the mandate.”By statute the Fed is responsible for maintaining stable prices and maximum employment. Bostic said that in conversations with businesses “no one is talking to me as if large job losses are imminent,” and he expects the unemployment rate to end 2024 at 4% – low by historic standards in the U.S. and only a modest rise from the current 3.7%. But “that is something I’m going to keep an ear out for in the next three to six months to see if that changes,” he said. “We want to make sure we are not triggering something that leads to losses that wouldn’t be necessary for us to get to the 2% target.”Even so, an interview aired later in the day on Marketplace radio, Bostic doubled down on his cautious approach to easing back policy. “This is the time when we’ve got to be resolute, and make sure that we don’t jump to conclusions and declare victory,” he said, noting that with inflation still above target, “Look, there’s still a ways to go.” More