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    Liz Truss’ Woes Multiply After Media Blitz

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    In a round of interviews, the prime minister showed little sympathy for the pain that high interest rates could inflict on mortgage holders, critics said.LONDON — For Prime Minister Liz Truss, it was a chance to steady the waters after days of turmoil in the financial markets over her new fiscal plan: eight rapid-fire interviews with local BBC radio stations from Leeds to Nottingham.By the time Ms. Truss signed off from the last one on Thursday morning, her political woes had multiplied, leaving her new government in a state of disarray almost without precedent in recent British politics.She was, critics said, robotic in defending a tax-cut plan that had been eviscerated by the markets, and showed little sympathy for the pain that high interest rates could inflict on mortgage holders. One host described her as a “reverse Robin Hood.” A listener on another station asked, “Are you ashamed of what you’ve done?”Barely three weeks into her job, Ms. Truss has suffered a dizzying loss of public support. Her Conservative Party now trails the opposition Labour Party by 33 percentage points, according to a new poll by the market research firm YouGov. That is the largest Labour lead since Tony Blair’s early days as prime minister in 1998, and the kind of gap that usually results in a landslide election defeat.Her plunging poll numbers have badly damaged Ms. Truss’s standing in her party, which is gathering on Sunday in Birmingham for what promises to be an anxious annual conference. Some speak openly of the party ousting her before the next election, though the mechanics for doing that remain complicated.“This is by far the biggest and swiftest hit to a party’s opinion poll rating that British politics has ever seen,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “For Tory MPs, this is like realizing on your wedding night that you’ve made a truly terrible mistake.”Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at Kent University and an expert on the Tory Party, said, “I can’t think in my lifetime of any British prime minister who has mismanaged her first few weeks in office like Liz Truss.”What makes Ms. Truss’s predicament so difficult is that none of the escape hatches are appealing. Reversing some of her tax cuts — particularly the one for the top income bracket of people earning more than 150,000 pounds, or about $164,000, a year — would mollify the markets and probably some voters.Tax cuts announced last week by Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, threw the markets into turmoil.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersBut it would be a heavy psychological blow for a leader who ran her campaign, and has built her government, on the conviction that tax cuts and supply-side policies will reignite growth. Giving that up, Professor Bale said, would vitiate the ideological rationale of her government and potentially turn her into a lame-duck leader until the next election, which she will have to call by early 2025.Sticking to her guns, which has been Ms. Truss’s response so far, leaves open the chance that Britain’s economy will pick up by the time she faces voters. But the stubborn threat of inflation all but guarantees that the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank, will keep raising interest rates. That will hurt people who need to refinance home mortgages and likely throw the broader economy into a recession.More on Politics in BritainPrime Minister Liz Truss was chosen by a divided British Conservative Party to lead a country facing the gravest economic crisis in a generation.A Domestic Push: After a period of mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the new government led by Ms. Truss began to work in earnest, announcing several initiatives to address Britain’s economic and social problems.A Turn Toward Thatcherism: Ms. Truss bet on a heavy dose of tax cuts, deregulation and free-market economics to reignite growth. The negative reaction from financial markets underscored the extent of the gamble.Seizing the Moment: Accusing Ms. Truss of losing control of Britain’s economy, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, staked his claim as the guardian of sound fiscal policy.Energy Policies: The British government said it would freeze electric and gas bills for households and cut energy costs for companies in an effort to mitigate the effects of Russia’s restriction of gas supplies to Europe.When she was asked by BBC Radio Stoke about her fiscal plan’s impact on the housing market, Ms. Truss paused before saying, “Interest rates are a matter for the independent Bank of England.” She added that “interest rates have been rising around the world” and blamed much of the crisis on Russia’s war in Ukraine.For the last few days, the bank has actually helped Ms. Truss by intervening in the market to buy British government bonds. That brought down interest rates and strengthened the pound, which had tumbled to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985. On Friday, the pound traded up to $1.11.But the intervention, which was driven by fears of the damage done to British pension funds by the turbulent market, has put the Bank of England in an awkward position, economists said. It runs counter to the bank’s monetary policy of raising interest rates to cool inflationary pressures.“The bank has had to reverse course on its objectives practically overnight,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University. “It looks like the bank is being forced to clean up the adverse consequences of the U.K. Treasury’s actions.”“This could have some longer-term implications for the bank’s independence, credibility, and effectiveness,” Professor Prasad continued. “That really hampers it in its ability to fulfill its objectives.”Once the Bank of England completes its bond-buying program on Oct. 14, economists said they expected it to revert to its tighter monetary policy, which would suggest another increase in interest rates at its November meeting. The only government action that could forestall, or even moderate a sharp spike in rates, economists said, would be if the government reversed one of more of its tax cuts.“Absent that U-turn, the bank is going to have to raise interest rates a lot,” said Adam S. Posen, who served on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. He said the bank needed to curb both the inflation from an expansionary fiscal budget and the additional inflation caused by a devalued pound.Once the Bank of England completes its bond buying program, economists expect it to revert to its tighter monetary policy by possibly raising interest rates at its November meeting.Hannah Mckay/ReutersBeyond the tug-of-war between fiscal and monetary policy, critics say Ms. Truss faces a more elemental problem: her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, has lost the faith of the markets in his economic stewardship.That is partly because when Mr. Kwarteng announced the tax cuts last week, he did not submit the package to the scrutiny that a government budget normally receives. That fed fears that the tax cuts were “unfunded,” meaning that they would not be matched with cuts in spending and so would require massive borrowing.On Friday, Mr. Kwarteng and Ms. Truss met at Downing Street with officials from the government’s forecasting agency, the Office of Budget Responsibility — a move designed to signal they now welcomed the scrutiny. The office will submit its projections for the cost of the fiscal program and its effect on Britain’s growth on Oct. 7, but the government will not publish the numbers until Nov. 23.For Ms. Truss, the political fallout from her program’s botched rollout has been profound. Political analysts point out that she won the support of only a third of Conservative Party lawmakers in the first stage of the leadership contest. Now, the collapsing polls have left the lawmakers angry, fearful, and divided.Unless the trends are reversed, many of the party’s members in Parliament will be swept out of their seats in the next election, particularly in the “red wall” districts of the Midlands and the North, where Ms. Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, lured traditional Labour voters to switch to the Tories with his promise to “Get Brexit done.”That realignment of British politics is in jeopardy. Professor Goodwin, of the University of Kent, said these voters did not want Ms. Truss’s low-tax, neoliberal economic policies. Adding to the alienation, he said, she was determined to relax immigration laws, another core issue for working-class voters.“We’re seeing the complete implosion of the Conservative vote,” Professor Goodwin said. “They’re losing middle-class voters who are alienated by Brexit, and working-class voters who are alienated by their economic policy.”For all the hand-wringing, it is not immediately clear what the Tories can do about it. Three months after evicting Mr. Johnson from Downing Street, few people want to go through with another protracted, divisive leadership contest.Professor Bale said another option would be for the party to settle on a consensus alternative to Ms. Truss and then pressure her to step down, so the new leader could be crowned without any delay. The problem with this scenario, he said, is a lack of obvious candidates to step into the role of the party’s savior. More

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    Why the British Pound Continues to Sink

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    Britain’s pound coin — rimmed in nickel and brass with an embossed image of Queen Elizabeth II at the center — could always be counted on to be significantly more valuable than the dollar.Such boasting rights effectively came to an end this week when the value of the pound sank to its lowest recorded level: £1 = $1.03 after falling more than 20 percent this year.The nearly one-to-one parity between the currencies sounded the close of a chapter in Britain’s history nearly as much as the metronomic footfalls of the procession that carried the queen’s funeral bier up the pavement to Windsor Castle.“The queen’s death for many people brought to an end a long era of which the soft power in the United Kingdom” was paramount, said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. “The pound’s demise to its lowest level is sort of indicative of this broader decline in multiple dimensions.”The immediate cause of the pound’s alarming fall on Monday was the announcement of a spending and tax plan by Britain’s new Conservative government, which promised steep tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthiest individuals along with expensive measures to help blunt the painful rise in energy prices on consumers and businesses.The sense of crisis ramped up Wednesday when the Bank of England intervened, in a rare move, and warned of “material risk to U.K. financial stability” from the government’s plan. The central bank said it would start buying British government bonds “on whatever scale is necessary” to stem a sell-off in British debt.The Bank of England’s emergency action seemed at odds with its efforts that began months ago to try to slow the nearly 10 percent annual inflation rate, which has lifted the price of essentials like petrol and food to painful levels.Rising Inflation in BritainInflation Slows Slightly: Consumer prices are still rising at about the fastest pace in 40 years, despite a small drop to 9.9 percent in August.Interest Rates: On Sept. 22, the Bank of England raised its key rate by another half a percentage point, to 2.25 percent, as it tries to keep high inflation from becoming embedded in the nation’s economy.Energy Bills to Soar: Gas and electric charges for most British households are set to rise 80 percent this fall, further squeezing consumers and stoking inflation.Investor Worries: The financial markets have been grumbling with unease about Britain’s economic outlook. The government plan to freeze energy bills and cut taxes is not easing concerns.The swooning pound this week has carried an unmistakable political message, amounting to a no-confidence vote by the world’s financial community in the economic strategy proposed by Prime Minister Liz Truss and her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng.To Mr. Goldin, the pound’s journey indicates a decline in economic and political influence that accelerated when Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. In many respects, Britain already has the worst performing economy, aside from Russia, of the 38-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.“It’s just a question of time before it falls out of the top 10 economies in the world,” Mr. Goldin said. Britain ranks sixth, having been surpassed by India.Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, said this latest plunge had delivered a bracing blow to Britain’s standing. A series of “self-inflicted wounds,” including Brexit and the government’s latest spending plan, have accelerated the pound’s slide and further endangered London’s status as a global financial center.Dozens of currencies, including the euro, the Japanese yen and the Chinese renminbi, have slumped in recent weeks. Rising interest rates and a relatively bright economic outlook in the United States combined with turmoil in the global economy have made investments in dollars particularly appealing.But the revival by the Truss government of an extreme version of Thatcher and Reagan-era “trickle-down” economic policies elicited a brutal response.“The problem isn’t that the U.K. budget was inflationary,” wrote Dario Perkins, a managing director at TS Lombard, a research firm, on Twitter. “It’s that it was moronic.”To some, the pound’s journey indicates a decline in Britain’s economic and political influence.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesDuring the more than 1,000 years in which the pound sterling has reigned as Britain’s national currency, it has suffered its share of ups and downs. Its value in the modern era could never match the value of an actual pound of silver, which in the 10th century could buy 15 cows.Over the centuries, British leaders have often gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the pound’s value, viewing its strength as a sign of the country’s economic power and influence. King Henry I issued a decree in 1125 ordering that those who produced substandard currency “lose their right hand and be castrated.”In the 1960s, the Labour government under Harold Wilson so resisted devaluing the pound — then set at a fixed rate of $2.80, high enough to be holding back the British economy — that he ordered cabinet papers discussing the idea to be burned. In 1967, the government finally cut its value by 14 percent to $2.40.Other economic crises thrashed the pound. In the 1970s, when oil prices skyrocketed and Britain’s inflation rate topped 25 percent, the government was compelled to ask the International Monetary Fund for a $3.9 billion loan. In the mid-1980s, when high U.S. interest rates and a Reagan administration spending spree jacked up the dollar’s value, the pound fell to a then record low.The pound’s dominance has been waning since the end of World War II. Today, the global economy is experiencing a particularly tumultuous time as it recovers from the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an energy shortage and soaring inflation.As Richard Portes, an economics professor at London Business School, said, currency exchanges have enormous swings over time. The euro was worth 82 cents in its early days, he recalled, and people referred to it as a “toilet paper” currency. But by 2008, its value had doubled to $1.60.What might cause the pound to revive is not clear.The Truss government’s economic program has forcefully accelerated the pound’s slide — the latest in a series of what many economists consider egregious economic missteps that peaked with Brexit.Much depends on the Truss government.“The plunge in the pound is the result of policy choices, not some historical inevitability” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “Whether this is a new, grim era or just an unfortunate interlude depends on whether they reverse course or are kicked out at the next election.”As it happens, the Bank of England is preparing to issue new pound bank notes and coins featuring King Charles III, at the very moment that the pound has dropped to record lows.“The death of the queen and the fall of the pound do seem jointly to signify decisively the end of an era,” Mr. Prasad of Cornell said. “These two events could be considered markers in a long historical procession in the British economy and the pound sterling becoming far less important than they once were.” More

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    To Calm Markets, Bank of England Will Buy Bonds ‘On Whatever Scale is Necessary’

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    The purchases are designed “to restore orderly market conditions,” the central bank said, after days of turmoil that followed the government’s plan for sweeping tax cuts and higher borrowing.The Bank of England said on Wednesday that it would temporarily buy British government bonds, a major intervention in financial markets after the new government’s fiscal plans sent borrowing costs soaring higher over the past few days.The news brought some relief to the bond market, but the British pound resumed its tumble, falling 1.7 percent against the dollar, to $1.05, back toward the record low reached on Monday.The British government’s plans to bolster economic growth by cutting taxes, especially for high earners, while spending heavily to protect households from rising energy costs has been resoundingly rejected by markets and economists, in part because of the large amount of borrowing it will require at a time of rising interest rates and high inflation. The International Monetary Fund unexpectedly made a statement about the British economy on Tuesday, urging the government to “re-evaluate” its plans.The sell-off in British assets since Friday, when the government’s plan was announced, has particularly affected bonds with long maturities, the Bank of England said. “Were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to U.K. financial stability,” it said in a statement. This would lead to a reduction of the flow of credit to businesses and households, it added.“The purpose of these purchases will be to restore orderly market conditions,” the central bank added in its statement, which had an immediate effect on markets. “The purchases will be carried out on whatever scale is necessary to effect this outcome.”Rising Inflation in BritainInflation Slows Slightly: Consumer prices are still rising at about the fastest pace in 40 years, despite a small drop to 9.9 percent in August.Interest Rates: On Sept. 22, the Bank of England raised its key rate by another half a percentage point, to 2.25 percent, as it tries to keep high inflation from becoming embedded in the nation’s economy.Energy Bills to Soar: Gas and electric charges for most British households are set to rise 80 percent this fall, further squeezing consumers and stoking inflation.Investor Worries: The financial markets have been grumbling with unease about Britain’s economic outlook. The government plan to freeze energy bills and cut taxes is not easing concerns.Bond auctions would take place from Wednesday until Oct. 14.The yield on 10-year British government bonds on Wednesday climbed as high as 4.58 percent — the highest since early 2008 — before the central bank’s statement. Thirty-year yields had exceeded 5 percent for the first time since 2002.After the announcement bond yields dropped sharply, with the 30-year yield falling by more than half a percentage point to about 4.35 percent.The central bank’s statement has echoes of a famous promise by Mario Draghi in 2012, when as head of the European Central Bank he vowed to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, which had come under severe pressure in the markets.Wednesday’s intervention in Britain came after a central bank committee had warned of the risks to Britain’s financial stability from dysfunction in the government bond market.The British government’s sweeping fiscal plan, presented without an independent fiscal and economic assessment, has sent investors fleeing from British assets. The pound fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar on Monday, and traders suspected that the central bank would be forced to raise rates quickly, which pushed up short- and long-term borrowing costs.The speed of the rise in bond yields had disrupted Britain’s mortgage market, with some lenders pulling offers on new mortgages because they had become too difficult to price.“A decision by the government to scrap some of the tax cuts, or to cut spending sharply, would help to alleviate the stress in” currency and bond markets, Samuel Tombs, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a research note. “But its actions to date have eroded confidence among global investors, which cannot be easily restored. Accordingly, a painful recession driven by surging borrowing costs lies ahead.”The market turmoil and the central bank’s intervention reveal the extent to which the government’s plans are at odds with the bank’s monetary policy goals. The government is trying to quickly generate economic demand, while the bank is trying to cool it to lower inflation.On Tuesday, Huw Pill, the chief economist of the Bank of England, said the government’s fiscal plans would be met with a “significant” response by officials at the Bank of England, who are scheduled to meet again in early November.Just last Thursday, the central bank said it would initiate its plan to sell bonds back to the market as it tried to end the long era of easy money in its fight against inflation. It had insisted there would be a “high bar” for the bank to deviate from the plan, which would over the next year reduce its holdings of bonds by £80 billion through sales and redemptions, to £758 billion. On Wednesday, the bank said it was postponing the start of sales until the end of October. More

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    Fed’s Kashkari says officials are ‘a long way’ from backing off inflation fight.

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    Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, suggested on Friday that markets had gotten ahead of themselves in anticipating that the central bank — which has been raising interest rates swiftly this year — would soon begin to back off.“I’m surprised by markets’ interpretation,” Mr. Kashkari said in an interview. “The committee is united in our determination to get inflation back down to 2 percent, and I think we’re going to continue to do what we need to do until we are convinced that inflation is well on its way back down to 2 percent — and we are a long way away from that.”Fed officials raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point this week, their second consecutive supersize rate increase and a move that took their policy setting to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent. That’s roughly what policymakers think of as a neutral setting, one that neither stokes nor slows growth, and further increases in interest rates will begin to actively hit the brakes on the economy.Given that fact, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said policymakers would now set rates meeting by meeting rather than committing to a broad plan well in advance. Investors took that as a sign that the central bank was likely to slow rate moves sharply in the coming months as the economy slows. In fact, bond market pricing suggests that investors think officials may even begin to cut interest rates next year.“I don’t know what the bond market is looking at in reaching that conclusion,” Mr. Kashkari said, adding that the bar would be “very, very high” to lower rates.Mr. Kashkari said that it was too soon to know how big of a rate increase might be appropriate in September, but that raising rates by half a point at coming Fed meetings “seems reasonable” to him.He noted, however, that inflation data had been surprising “in a bad way” and that continued higher core inflation could push him to think a three-quarter-point move would be needed. (Core inflation strips out volatile fuel and food prices to get a sign of underlying inflation pressures.)The difficult question to answer, Mr. Kashkari said, is how high interest rates will need to rise to wrestle inflation back down.“How much are we going to have to do to break the cycle of inflation and get inflation well on its way back down?” Mr. Kashkari said. “Nobody knows that.”But, he added, “We know we have a job to do, and we’re committed to doing it.” More

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    Stock Market Drop Accelerated as Recession Seemed More Likely

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    Further losses may be on the way, even after a 20 percent drop in the first half of the year, as Wall Street continues to price in the Fed’s aggressive interest rate policy.Investors had an awful start to the year as stocks twice entered bear market territory, falling more than 20 percent. Stocks didn’t hang there long the first time, but the second drop has proved more durable, as Wall Street has come to accept that inflation is more persistent and that the Federal Reserve will have to be more aggressive in combating it.The S&P 500 lost 16.4 percent in the second quarter, leaving it 20.6 percent below its level at the end of 2021.Where to now? While a bounce in stocks certainly seems due, investment advisers say a lasting recovery is unlikely for now. They warn that a recession is probably on the way, if it’s not here already, and that valuations remain high, even after the big decline.“I think we’re in for a lot more pain, probably, in U.S. stocks,” said Meb Faber, chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management. “Just to get back to historical valuations, we could easily go down a third from here.”Ella Hoxha, a manager of global bond portfolios for Pictet Asset Management, said expectations still haven’t been adjusted to incorporate the likely risk of a recession. It may seem surprising that a recession could catch Wall Street by surprise when the conversation there is about little else. But until recently, Wall Street played down its chances and talked up the prospects of a soft landing, in which growth slows but the economy avoids major, prolonged disruption.“The odds of a recession have gone up, but the markets have not fully priced in the recession case yet,” Ms. Hoxha said. “Not only is the Fed having to correct being too dovish last year, it has to unwind its balance sheet” by selling the bonds and other securities it bought to support the economy and markets.Mutual FundsHighlights of mutual fund performance in the second quarter. More

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    Fed Raises Interest Rate Half a Percentage Point, Largest Increase Since 2000

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    #g-target-rate-recessions-box , #g-target-rate-recessions-box .g-artboard { margin:0 auto; } #g-target-rate-recessions-box p { margin:0; } #g-target-rate-recessions-box .g-aiAbs { position:absolute; } #g-target-rate-recessions-box .g-aiImg { position:absolute; top:0; display:block; width:100% !important; } #g-target-rate-recessions-box .g-aiSymbol { position: absolute; box-sizing: border-box; } #g-target-rate-recessions-box .g-aiPointText p { white-space: nowrap; } #g-target-rate-recessions-335 { position:relative; overflow:hidden; } #g-target-rate-recessions-335 p { font-family:nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight:700; line-height:15px; height:auto; opacity:1; […] More

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    March Fed Minutes: ‘Many’ Officials in Favor of a Big Rate Increase

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    Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March meeting showed that central bankers were preparing to shrink their portfolio of bond holdings imminently while raising interest rates “expeditiously,” as the central bank tries to cool off the economy and rapid inflation.Fed officials are making money more expensive to borrow and spend in a bid to slow shopping and business investment, hoping that weaker demand will help to tame prices, which are now climbing at the fastest pace in four decades.Central bankers raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point in March, their first increase since 2018 — and the minutes showed that “many” officials would have preferred an even bigger rate move and were held back only by uncertainty tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Markets now expect the Fed to make half-point increases in May and possibly June, even as they begin to withdraw additional support from the economy by shrinking their balance sheet.The balance sheet stands at nearly $9 trillion — swollen by pandemic response policies — and Fed officials plan to shrink it by allowing some of their government-backed bond holdings to expire starting as soon as May, the minutes showed. That will help to further push up interest rates, potentially leading to slower growth, more muted hiring and weaker wage increases. Eventually, the theory goes, the chain reaction should help to slow inflation. “They’re very resolute in fighting inflation and moving it lower,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “They are concerned.”While central bankers were hesitant to react to rapid inflation last year, hoping it would prove “transitory” and fade quickly, those expectations have been dashed. Price increases remain rapid, and officials are watching warily for signs that they might turn more permanent.“All participants underscored the need to remain attentive to the risks of further upward pressure on inflation and longer-run inflation expectations,” the minutes showed.Now, officials are trying to cool off the economy as it is growing quickly and the job market is rapidly improving. Employers added 431,000 jobs in March, wages are climbing swiftly, and the unemployment rate is just about matching the 50-year low that prevailed before the pandemic.Central bankers are hoping that the strong job market will help them slow the economy without tipping it into an outright recession. That will be a challenge, given the Fed’s blunt policy tools, a reality that officials have acknowledged.At the same time, Fed officials are worried that if they do not respond vigorously to high inflation, consumers and businesses may come to expect persistently higher prices. That could perpetuate quick price increases and make wrestling them under control even more painful.“It is of paramount importance to get inflation down,” Lael Brainard, a Fed governor who is the nominee to be the central bank’s vice chair, said on Tuesday. “Accordingly, the committee will continue tightening monetary policy methodically through a series of interest rate increases and by starting to reduce the balance sheet at a rapid pace as soon as our May meeting.”Ms. Brainard’s statement that balance sheet shrinking could happen “rapidly” caught markets by surprise, sending stocks lower and rates on bonds higher. Investors also focused their attention on the minutes released on Wednesday.The notes from the March meeting provided more details about what the balance sheet process might look like. Fed officials are coalescing around a plan to slow their reinvestment of securities, the minutes showed, most likely capping the monthly shrinking at $60 billion for Treasury securities and $35 billion for mortgage-backed debt.That would be about twice the maximum pace the Fed set when it shrank its balance sheet between 2017 and 2019, confirming the signal policymakers have been giving in recent weeks that the plan could proceed much more quickly this time around.The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6Rising concerns. More