Bostic, Raphael W

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Why Are People So Down About the Economy? Theories Abound.

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Things look strong on paper, but many Americans remain unconvinced. We asked economic officials, the woman who coined “vibecession” and Charlamagne Tha God what they think is happening.The U.S. economy has been an enigma over the past few years. The job market is booming, and consumers are still spending, which is usually a sign of optimism. But if you ask Americans, many will tell you that they feel bad about the economy and are unhappy about President Biden’s economic record.Call it the vibecession. Call it a mystery. Blame TikTok, media headlines or the long shadow of the pandemic. The gloom prevails. The University of Michigan consumer confidence index, which looked a little bit sunnier this year after a substantial slowdown in inflation over 2023, has again soured. And while a measure of sentiment produced by the Conference Board improved in May, the survey showed that expectations remained shaky.The negativity could end up mattering in the 2024 presidential election. More than half of registered voters in six battleground states rated the economy as “poor” in a recent poll by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College. And 14 percent said the political and economic system needed to be torn down entirely.What’s going on here? We asked government officials and prominent analysts from the Federal Reserve, the White House, academia and the internet commentariat about what they think is happening. Here’s a summary of what they said.Kyla Scanlon, coiner of the term ‘Vibecession’Price levels matter, and people are also getting some facts wrong.The most common explanation for why people feel bad about the economy — one that every person interviewed for this article brought up — is simple. Prices jumped a lot when inflation was really rapid in 2021 and 2022. Now they aren’t climbing as quickly, but people are left contending with the reality that rent, cheeseburgers, running shoes and day care all cost more.“Inflation is a pressure cooker,” said Kyla Scanlon, who this week is releasing a book titled “In This Economy?” that explains common economic concepts. “It hurts over time. You had a couple of years of pretty high inflation, and people are really dealing with the aftermath of that.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Higher for Longer After All? Investors See Fed Rates Falling More Slowly.

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    Investors went into 2024 expecting the Federal Reserve to cut rates sharply. Stubborn inflation and quick growth call that into question.Investors were betting big on Federal Reserve rate cuts at the start of 2024, wagering that central bankers would lower interest rates to around 4 percent by the end of the year. But after months of stubborn inflation and strong economic growth, the outlook is starting to look much less dramatic.Market pricing now suggests that rates will end the year in the neighborhood of 4.75 percent. That would mean Fed officials had cut rates two or three times from their current 5.3 percent.Policymakers are trying to strike a delicate balance as they contemplate how to respond to the economic moment. Central bankers do not want to risk tanking the job market and causing a recession by keeping interest rates too high for too long. But they also want to avoid cutting borrowing costs too early or too much, which could prod the economy to re-accelerate and inflation to take even firmer root. So far, officials have maintained their forecast for 2024 rate cuts while making it clear that they are in no hurry to lower them.Here’s what policymakers are looking at as they think about what to do with interest rates, how the incoming data might reshape the path ahead, and what that will mean for markets and the economy.What ‘higher for longer’ means.When people say they expect rates to be “higher for longer,” they often mean one or both of two things. Sometimes, the phrase refers to the near term: The Fed might take longer to start cutting borrowing costs and proceed with those reductions more slowly this year. Other times, it means that interest rates will remain notably higher in the years to come than was normal in the decade leading up to the 2020 pandemic.When it comes to 2024, top Fed officials have been very clear that they are primarily focused on what is happening with inflation as they debate when to lower interest rates. If policymakers believe that price increases are going to return to their 2 percent goal, they could feel comfortable cutting even in a strong economy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Fed Wants to Quash Inflation. But Can It Do It More Gently?

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    Federal Reserve officials have raised rates five times this year as they try to beat back the worst inflation in 40 years, and the past three moves have been especially rapid. That has prompted Wall Street and policymakers to contemplate when the Fed might start to slow down.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has signaled that moving less rapidly will be appropriate at some point in the future, though he has declined to put a date on when that might begin. On Thursday, Lisa D. Cook, one of the Fed’s newest governors, echoed that stance, saying that “at some point” the central bank will decide to “slow the pace of increases while we assess the effects of our cumulative tightening on the economy and inflation.”Based on the central bank’s statements and economic projections, markets are betting heavily that the pace will not step down until December. But a debate is beginning to firm up ahead of the central bank’s meeting in early November: Some officials are open to a potential slowdown as soon as the meeting next month, while others believe that the central bank needs to push ahead with very rapid policy adjustments as it races to control inflation.Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said she could potentially support a half-point move at the central bank’s meeting next month. While still a larger increase than in normal times, a half-point move would be less aggressive than the three-quarter-point change the Fed made at each of its last three meetings.Ms. Daly is less aggressive than the majority of her colleagues, favoring one percentage point of further rate increases before the end of the year — less than the at least 1.25 percentage points that most people on the committee view as warranted.“I think we don’t need to signal that we’re resolute anymore; I think people really understand that we’re resolute,” Ms. Daly said during an interview with The New York Times this week. “I am very open to stepping down the pace. But the data will help me determine whether I’m supportive of 75 followed by 25, or whether I’m supportive of 50 followed by 50.”Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, said on Thursday that inflation had not shaped up the way he would want “to support a slower pace of rate hikes” than the Fed had previously projected, and argued that a few more data points were unlikely to change his mind.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Fed Confronts Why It May Have Acted Too Slowly on Inflation

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    Central bankers have been asking whether they should have reacted faster to rising inflation last year — and are learning from the recent past.Some Federal Reserve officials have begun to acknowledge that they were too slow to respond to rapid inflation last year, a delay that is forcing them to constrain the economy more abruptly now — and one that could hold lessons for the policy path ahead.Inflation began to accelerate last spring, but Fed policymakers and most private-sector forecasters initially thought price gains would quickly fade. It became clear in early fall that fast inflation was proving to be more lasting — but the Fed pivoted toward rapidly removing policy support only in late November and did not raise rates until March.Several current and former Fed officials have suggested in recent days that, in hindsight, the central bank should have reacted more quickly and forcefully last fall, but that both profound uncertainty about the future and the Fed’s approach to setting policy slowed it down.Officials had spent years dealing with tepid inflation, which made some hesitant to believe that rapidly rising prices would last. Even as they became more concerned, it took the Fed’s large group of policymakers time to come to an agreement on how to respond. Another complicating factor was that the Fed had made clear promises to markets about how it would remove support for the economy, which made adjusting quickly more difficult.“It was a complicated situation with little precedent — people make mistakes,” Randal K. Quarles, who was the Fed’s vice chair for supervision in 2021, said at a conference last week.Mr. Quarles, who left the Fed at the end of the year, argued that it should have begun to pull back support aggressively after September. He added, however, that the rate increases that central bankers were now making could still fix the situation.Even so, the delay could come with consequences. By the time the Fed completely stopped buying bonds and began raising rates in March, prices were rising 8.5 percent from a year earlier, the fastest rate since 1981. Consumer price increases are expected to remain rapid when fresh data are released Wednesday.Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.Interest Rates: As it seeks to curb inflation, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates for the first time since 2018. Here is what the increases mean for consumers.State Intervention: As inflation stays high, lawmakers across the country are turning to tax cuts to ease the pain, but the measures could make things worse. How Americans Feel: We asked 2,200 people where they’ve noticed inflation. Many mentioned basic necessities, like food and gas.And as high prices have lingered, inflation expectations have been creeping up, threatening to change household and business behavior in ways that perpetuate the problem.Because inflation is eating away at paychecks and making it more difficult for families to afford groceries and cars, it has emerged as a major political issue for President Biden, whose approval ratings have fallen over concerns about his handling of the economy. During remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Biden called inflation his “top domestic priority” and said his administration was taking steps to contain it. He also sought to push back on Republicans, who have spent months blaming him for stoking inflation, saying their policy ideas were “extreme” and would hurt working families.“I want every American to know that I’m taking inflation very seriously,” Mr. Biden said, noting that the Fed has the “primary role” in trying to tame price increases.The Fed is now raising rates quickly to wrestle the situation back under control. Officials lifted borrowing costs half a percentage point this month, their biggest increase since 2000, while broadcasting that two more large adjustments could be coming. They are also going to start shrinking their $9 trillion balance sheet of bond holdings next month.If the Fed continues to rapidly adjust policy this year as it tries to catch up, policymakers risk slamming the brakes on a speeding economy. Such hard stops can hurt, pushing up unemployment and possibly tipping off a recession. Officials typically prefer to apply their policy brakes gradually, increasing the chances that the economy can slow down painlessly.Still, several Fed officials pointed out that it was easier to say what the Fed should have done in 2021 after the fact — that in the moment, it was difficult to know price increases would last. Inflation initially came mainly from a few big products that were in short supply amid supply chain snarls, like semiconductors and cars. Only later in the year did it become obvious that price pressures were broadening to food, rent and other areas.“I try to give some grace, and say: In a very uncertain time, with an unprecedented setting, with no real models to guide us, people are going to do the best they can,” Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said in an interview Monday. Mr. Bostic was an early voice suggesting that the Fed should stop buying bonds and think about raising interest rates.Officials have said it was the acceleration in inflation data in September, followed by rising employment costs, that convinced them that price gains might last and that the central bank needed to act decisively. The Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, pivoted on policy in late November as those data points added up.“It was a complicated situation with little precedent — people make mistakes,” said Randal K. Quarles, who was the Fed’s vice chair for supervision in 2021.Erin Scott/ReutersWhile Mr. Quarles argued that the Fed should have responded as the September data came in, he suggested that there had been a complicating factor: Mr. Powell was waiting to see if he would be reappointed by the Biden administration, which did not announce its decision to renominate him until mid-November.Mr. Quarles, on a “Banking With Interest” podcast episode last week, said reacting to the data was “hard to do until there was clarity as to what the leadership going forward of the Fed was going to be.”Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Federal Reserve Isn't Likely to Change Course After Ukraine Invasion

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    Federal Reserve officials are turning a wary eye to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though several have signaled in recent days that geopolitical tensions are unlikely to keep them from pulling back their support for the U.S. economy when the job market is booming and prices are climbing rapidly.Stock indexes are swooning, and the prices of key commodities — including oil and gas — have risen sharply and could continue to rise as Russia, a major producer, responds to American and European sanctions.That makes the invasion a complicated risk for the Fed: On one hand, its fallout is likely to further push up price inflation, which is already running at its fastest pace in 40 years. On the other, it could weigh on growth if stock prices continue to plummet and nervous consumers in Europe and the United States pull back from spending.The magnitude of the potential economic hit is far from certain, and for now, central bank officials have signaled that they will remain on track to raise interest rates from near zero in a series of increases starting next month, a policy path that will make borrowing money more expensive and cool down the economy.Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said during a speech on Thursday that she still expected it “will be appropriate to move the funds rate up in March and follow with further increases in the coming months.”But she noted that the invasion could inform how quickly the Fed moved over a longer time frame.“The implications of the unfolding situation in Ukraine for the medium-run economic outlook in the U.S. will also be a consideration in determining the appropriate pace at which to remove accommodation,” Ms. Mester said.Her comments were in line with those that many of her colleagues have made this week, including on Thursday after the invasion: Central bankers are monitoring the situation, but with inflation rapid and likely to head higher yet, they are not preparing to cancel their plans to pull back economic support.“I see the geopolitical situation, unless it would deteriorate substantially, as part of the larger uncertainty that we face in the United States and our U.S. economy,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said Wednesday at an event hosted by the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. “We’ll have to navigate that as we go forward.”But Ms. Daly said she did not “see anything right now” that would disrupt the Fed’s plan to lift interest rates.Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said during an appearance Thursday that “time will tell” if the policy path needed to adjust. Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said during a separate speech on Thursday that it was not his baseline expectation that the Ukraine conflict would affect the timing of the central bank’s first rate increase.Even if it is not enough to shake the Fed from its course, some analysts are warning that the fallout of the conflict could be meaningful.“Normally geopolitical crises ultimately turn out to be a fade for financial markets and a buying opportunity for investors willing to look past the headlines,” Krishna Guha at Evercore ISI wrote in a research note Thursday morning. “We are very wary of taking that line today.”Mr. Guha noted that the invasion could disrupt the post-Cold War world order and warned that the jump in energy prices and fallout from sanctions “will complicate the ability of central banks on both sides of the Atlantic to engineer a soft landing from the pandemic inflation surge.”Economists have been warning that a “soft landing” — in which central banks guide the economy onto a sustainable path without causing a recession — might be difficult to achieve when prices have taken off and monetary policies across much of Europe and North America may need to readjust substantially.“The shock of war adds to the enormous challenges facing central banks worldwide,” Isabel Schnabel, an executive board member at the European Central Bank, said during a Bank of England event on Thursday. She added that policymakers were monitoring the situation in Ukraine “very closely.”Inflation is high around much of the world, and though it is slightly less pronounced in Europe, and E.C.B. policymakers are reacting more slowly to it than some of their global counterparts, recent high readings there have prompted some officials to edge toward policy changes.In America, the Fed has sometimes reacted to global problems by cutting borrowing costs, making money cheaper and easier to obtain, rather than by lifting interest rates and making credit conditions tighter. But economists said this time was likely to be different.Russia’s Attack on Ukraine and the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6A rising concern. More

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    Fed Officials Make It Clear on Inflation: This Time Is Different

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    Federal Reserve officials are preparing to pull back their economic help as inflation remains stubbornly high and the labor market swiftly heals, and they are signaling clearly that the last business cycle is a poor template for what comes next.During the economic expansion that stretched from the global financial crisis to the start of the pandemic, the Fed acted very gradually — it slowly dialed back bond buying meant to help the economy, then only ploddingly shrank its balance sheet of asset holdings. Central bankers increased borrowing costs sporadically between 2015 and the end of 2018, raising them at every other meeting at the very fastest.But inflation was muted, the labor market was slowly crawling out of an abyss, and business conditions needed the Fed’s support. This time is different, a series of Fed presidents emphasized on Monday — suggesting that the pullback in policy support is likely to be quicker and more decisive.Four of the central bank’s 12 regional presidents spoke on Monday, and all suggested that the Fed could soon begin to cool off the economy. Central bankers are widely expected to make a series of interest rate increases starting in March, and could soon thereafter begin to fairly rapidly shrink their balance sheet holdings. The pace of policy retreat is still up for debate and officials reiterated that it will hinge on incoming data — but several also noted that economic conditions are unusually strong.“The economy is far stronger than it has been, during any of my time in this role, and certainly, during any of the recoveries that we’ve been trying to navigate our policy through in recent memory,” Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Any risks “that our policies are going to lead to a contraction in the economy, I think they’re relatively far off.”Understand Inflation in the U.S.Inflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Your Questions, Answered: We asked readers to send questions about inflation. Top experts and economists weighed in.What’s to Blame: Did the stimulus cause prices to rise? Or did pandemic lockdowns and shortages lead to inflation? A debate is heating up in Washington.Supply Chain’s Role: A key factor in rising inflation is the continuing turmoil in the global supply chain. Here’s how the crisis unfolded.While it took the Fed a long time to begin shrinking its balance sheet last time, the central bank will probably move more promptly in 2022, Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, suggested during a speech.“With inflation running at close to a 40-year high, considerable momentum in demand growth, and abundant signs and reports of labor market tightness, the current very accommodative stance of monetary policy is out of sync with the economic outlook,” said Ms. George, who votes on monetary policy this year.Tricky questions lie ahead about how big the balance sheet should be, she noted. The Fed’s holdings have swollen to nearly $9 trillion, more than twice its size before the pandemic.Ms. George estimated that the Fed’s big bond holdings were weighing down longer-term interest rates by roughly 1.5 percentage points — nearly cutting the interest rate on 10-year government debt in half. While shrinking the balance sheet risks roiling markets, she warned that if the Fed remains a big presence in the Treasury market, it could distort financial conditions and imperil the central bank’s prized independence from elected government.“While it might be tempting to err on the side of caution, the potential costs associated with an excessively large balance sheet should not be ignored,” she said. She suggested that shrinking the balance sheet could allow policymakers to raise rates, which are currently set near-zero, by less.Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, also argued for an active — albeit still gradual — path toward removing policy help.The Fed is not behind the curve, she said on a Reuters webcast, but it needs to react to the reality that the labor market appears at least temporarily short on workers and inflation is running hot. Prices picked up by 5.8 percent in the year through December, nearly three times the 2 percent the Fed aims for on average and over time.“We’re not trying to combat some vicious wage-price spiral,” Ms. Daly said. Still, she said she could support a rate increase as soon as March, and hinted that four rate increases could be reasonable, a path that would slow things down while “not pulling away the punch bowl completely and causing disruptions.”Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More

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    Fed Officials Make It Clear: This Time Is Different

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    Federal Reserve officials are preparing to pull back their economic help as inflation remains stubbornly high and the labor market swiftly heals, and they are signaling clearly that the last business cycle is a poor template for what comes next.During the economic expansion that stretched from the global financial crisis to the start of the pandemic, the Fed acted very gradually — it slowly dialed back bond buying meant to help the economy, then only ploddingly shrank its balance sheet of asset holdings. Central bankers increased borrowing costs sporadically between 2015 and the end of 2018, raising them at every other meeting at the very fastest.But inflation was muted, the labor market was slowly crawling out of an abyss, and business conditions needed the Fed’s support. This time is different, a series of Fed presidents emphasized on Monday — suggesting that the pullback in policy support is likely to be quicker and more decisive.Four of the central bank’s 12 regional presidents spoke on Monday, and all suggested that the Fed could soon begin to cool off the economy. Central bankers are widely expected to make a series of interest rate increases starting in March, and could soon thereafter begin to fairly rapidly shrink their balance sheet holdings. The pace of policy retreat is still up for debate and officials reiterated that it will hinge on incoming data — but several also noted that economic conditions are unusually strong.“The economy is far stronger than it has been, during any of my time in this role, and certainly, during any of the recoveries that we’ve been trying to navigate our policy through in recent memory,” Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. Any risks “that our policies are going to lead to a contraction in the economy, I think they’re relatively far off.”Understand Inflation in the U.S.Inflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Your Questions, Answered: We asked readers to send questions about inflation. Top experts and economists weighed in.What’s to Blame: Did the stimulus cause prices to rise? Or did pandemic lockdowns and shortages lead to inflation? A debate is heating up in Washington.Supply Chain’s Role: A key factor in rising inflation is the continuing turmoil in the global supply chain. Here’s how the crisis unfolded.While it took the Fed a long time to begin shrinking its balance sheet last time, the central bank will probably move more promptly in 2022, Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, suggested during a speech.“With inflation running at close to a 40-year high, considerable momentum in demand growth, and abundant signs and reports of labor market tightness, the current very accommodative stance of monetary policy is out of sync with the economic outlook,” said Ms. George, who votes on monetary policy this year.Tricky questions lie ahead about how big the balance sheet should be, she noted. The Fed’s holdings have swollen to nearly $9 trillion, more than twice its size before the pandemic.Ms. George estimated that the Fed’s big bond holdings were weighing down longer-term interest rates by roughly 1.5 percentage points — nearly cutting the interest rate on 10-year government debt in half. While shrinking the balance sheet risks roiling markets, she warned that if the Fed remains a big presence in the Treasury market, it could distort financial conditions and imperil the central bank’s prized independence from elected government.“While it might be tempting to err on the side of caution, the potential costs associated with an excessively large balance sheet should not be ignored,” she said. She suggested that shrinking the balance sheet could allow policymakers to raise rates, which are currently set near-zero, by less.Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, also argued for an active — albeit still gradual — path toward removing policy help.The Fed is not behind the curve, she said on a Reuters webcast, but it needs to react to the reality that the labor market appears at least temporarily short on workers and inflation is running hot. Prices picked up by 5.8 percent in the year through December, nearly three times the 2 percent the Fed aims for on average and over time.“We’re not trying to combat some vicious wage-price spiral,” Ms. Daly said. Still, she said she could support a rate increase as soon as March, and hinted that four rate increases could be reasonable, a path that would slow things down while “not pulling away the punch bowl completely and causing disruptions.”Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More