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    Fed Meets as Bank Chaos Collides With Inflation

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    The Federal Reserve will decide whether and by how much to raise interest rates this week at a moment when its path ahead is newly fraught.The Federal Reserve entered 2023 focused on a central goal: wrestling down the rapid inflation that has plagued American consumers since 2021. But over the past two weeks, that job has become a lot more complicated.Many economists expect central bankers to raise interest rates a quarter-point, to just above 4.75 percent, on Wednesday, continuing their fight against rapid price increases. A range of investors and analysts had expected the Fed to make an even bigger rate move until a series of high-profile bank closures and government rescues raised concerns about both the economic outlook and financial stability.On Sunday, the Fed pumped up its program that keeps dollar financing flowing around the world, its second move in a week to shore up the financial system. The previous Sunday, it unveiled an emergency lending program meant to serve as a relief valve for banks that need to raise cash.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, and his colleagues must now decide how to react to bank turmoil when it comes to interest rate policy, which guides the speed of the economy. And they must do so quickly. In addition to announcing a rate decision this week, Fed officials will also release a set of quarterly economic projections that will indicate how high they expect borrowing costs to climb this year. Central bankers had expected to lift them to roughly 5 percent in 2023 and, before the market volatility, had hinted that they might adjust that anticipated peak even higher in their new projections.But now, Fed officials will have to make their next move against a backdrop of banking system instability. They could try to balance the risk of lasting inflation against the risk of causing financial turmoil — raising rates more slowly and stopping earlier to avoid fueling more tumult. Or they could try to separate their inflation fight from the financial stability question altogether. Under that scenario, when it came to setting the level of interest rates, the Fed would pay attention to banking problems only inasmuch as they seemed likely to slow down the real economy.That’s the approach the European Central Bank took last week, when it followed through with plans to raise rates by half a point even as one of Europe’s biggest banks, Credit Suisse, was swept up in the market mayhem.The range of possibilities make this the most uncertain central bank gathering in years: During Mr. Powell’s tenure, officials have mostly hinted at what they are going to do with interest rates ahead of their meeting so that they do not catch financial markets by surprise and prompt a bigger-than-warranted reaction with their policy adjustment. But there is little clarity as this week begins. Investors were putting 60 percent odds on a quarter-point increase and 40 percent odds on no move at all.Some Wall Street economists thought the Fed would hit pause, and at least one or two anticipated an outright rate cut in response to the upheaval, though many expected a quarter-point increase.“You lose time on the fight against inflation if you wait,” said Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan. Still, Mr. Feroli had expected the Fed to raise its forecast for how high it would nudge rates this year, and he now expects them to leave their peak rate estimate unchanged at about 5 percent.The bout of banking unrest is likely to weigh on the economy, meaning that the central bank itself does not need to do as much to restrain economic growth. Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo, estimated that tightening lending standards and other fallout from the past week was roughly equivalent to a 1.5 percentage point increase in the Fed’s main policy rate.“In other words, over the past week, monetary conditions have tightened to a degree where the risks of a sharper slowdown in the economy have increased,” Mr. Slok wrote in an analysis over the weekend.But it is unclear how long any pullback in banks’ willingness to lend money will last, or if it will stabilize or worsen. Given the vast uncertainty, Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG, said officials might scrap their economic projections altogether, as they did at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.Releasing them would “add more confusion than clarity, given that we just don’t know,” Ms. Swonk said.Mr. Powell will hold a news conference on Wednesday after the release of the Fed’s post-meeting statement, one that could be tense for a number of reasons: Mr. Powell will most likely face questions about what went wrong with the oversight of Silicon Valley Bank. The Fed was its primary regulator, and was aware of issues at the bank for more than a year before its crash.And Mr. Powell will have to explain how officials are thinking about their policy path at a complicated juncture, when the Fed will have to weigh economic momentum against blowups in the banking sector.Hiring has stayed very strong in recent months: Employers added more than 300,000 jobs in February, after more than half a million in January. Officials had expected hiring to slow substantially after a year when rapid interest rate increases pushed borrowing costs to above 4.5 percent in February, from near zero last March, the fastest pace of adjustment since the 1980s.Inflation, too, has showed unexpected stickiness. While the Consumer Price Index has been slowing on an annual basis for months, it remained unusually rapid at 6 percent in February. And a closely watched monthly consumer price measure that strips out food and fuel, the prices of which bounce around, picked back up.Economists at Barclays suggested that the incoming data would probably have prodded the Fed to opt for a larger half-point rate increase, all else equal. But given the continuing bank problems — and the fact that Silicon Valley Bank’s distress was partly tied to higher interest rates — they expected the Fed to move by a quarter-point at this meeting to avoid further unsettling banks.“The link between the rising funds rate and risks of further bank distress presents a clear tension for the F.OM.C.,” the economist Marc Giannoni and his colleagues wrote, referring to the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. “Risk management considerations will warrant a less aggressive policy hike in March.”The economists noted that if the situation in the American banking system were not so closely tied to rising rates, Fed officials would most likely prefer to separate financial stability concerns from their fight against inflation.That is essentially what the European Central Bank chose to do last week. Officials there are also battling rapid inflation, and they are behind the Fed when it comes to raising interest rates, having started later. Their decision to raise rates a half-point came even as Credit Suisse fought for its life, prompting the Swiss government to arrange on Sunday a sale of the bank to UBS.“This is not going to stop our fight against inflation,” Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, said in a news conference on March 16. She added that officials “don’t see any trade-off” between pushing for price stability and financial stability, and that central bankers had separate tools to achieve each.That sort of message could be one the Fed wants to emulate, Mr. Feroli, of J.P. Morgan, said. Yet there are key differences in the United States, where there have been outright bank failures and where Fed rate moves have been part of the stress causing the turmoil.Ms. Swonk, of KPMG, said that she did not think the E.C.B.’s actions would serve as a road map for the Fed “given that the road is shifting as we speak,” and that she expected policymakers to hold off on a rate move this week.“At this point in time, for the Fed, a pregnant pause is warranted,” she said. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint — hold back now, promise to do more later if needed.” More

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    Before Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the Fed Spotted Big Problems

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    The bank was using an incorrect model as it assessed its own risks amid rising interest rates, and spent much of 2022 under a supervisory review.WASHINGTON — Silicon Valley Bank’s risky practices were on the Federal Reserve’s radar for more than a year — an awareness that proved insufficient to stop the bank’s demise.The Fed repeatedly warned the bank that it had problems, according to a person familiar with the matter.In 2021, a Fed review of the growing bank found serious weaknesses in how it was handling key risks. Supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw Silicon Valley Bank, issued six citations. Those warnings, known as “matters requiring attention” and “matters requiring immediate attention,” flagged that the firm was doing a bad job of ensuring that it would have enough easy-to-tap cash on hand in the event of trouble.But the bank did not fix its vulnerabilities. By July 2022, Silicon Valley Bank was in a full supervisory review — getting a more careful look — and was ultimately rated deficient for governance and controls. It was placed under a set of restrictions that prevented it from growing through acquisitions. Last autumn, staff members from the San Francisco Fed met with senior leaders at the firm to talk about their ability to gain access to enough cash in a crisis and possible exposure to losses as interest rates rose.It became clear to the Fed that the firm was using bad models to determine how its business would fare as the central bank raised rates: Its leaders were assuming that higher interest revenue would substantially help their financial situation as rates went up, but that was out of step with reality.By early 2023, Silicon Valley Bank was in what the Fed calls a “horizontal review,” an assessment meant to gauge the strength of risk management. That checkup identified additional deficiencies — but at that point, the bank’s days were numbered. In early March, it faced a run and failed, sending shock-waves across the broader American banking system that ultimately led to a sweeping government intervention meant to prevent panic from spreading. On Sunday, Credit Suisse, which was caught up in the panic that followed Silicon Valley Bank’s demise, was taken over by UBS in a hastily arranged deal put together by the Swiss government.Major questions have been raised about why regulators failed to spot problems and take action early enough to prevent Silicon Valley Bank’s March 10 downfall. Many of the issues that contributed to its collapse seem obvious in hindsight: Measuring by value, about 97 percent of its deposits were uninsured by the federal government, which made customers more likely to run at the first sign of trouble. Many of the bank’s depositors were in the technology sector, which has recently hit tough times as higher interest rates have weighed on business.And Silicon Valley Bank also held a lot of long-term debt that had declined in market value as the Fed raised interest rates to fight inflation. As a result, it faced huge losses when it had to sell those securities to raise cash to meet a wave of withdrawals from customers.The Fed has initiated an investigation into what went wrong with the bank’s oversight, headed by Michael S. Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision. The inquiry’s results are expected to be publicly released by May 1. Lawmakers are also digging into what went awry. The House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a hearing on recent bank collapses for March 29.Michael S. Barr’s review of the Silicon Valley Bank problems will focus on a few key questions.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressThe picture that is emerging is one of a bank whose leaders failed to plan for a realistic future and neglected looming financial and operational problems, even as they were raised by Fed supervisors. For instance, according to a person familiar with the matter, executives at the firm were told of cybersecurity problems both by internal employees and by the Fed — but ignored the concerns.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which has taken control of the firm, did not comment on its behalf.Still, the extent of known issues at the bank raises questions about whether Fed bank examiners or the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington could have done more to force the institution to address weaknesses. Whatever intervention was staged was too little to save the bank, but why remains to be seen.“It’s a failure of supervision,” said Peter Conti-Brown, an expert in financial regulation and a Fed historian at the University of Pennsylvania. “The thing we don’t know is if it was a failure of supervisors.”Mr. Barr’s review of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse will focus on a few key questions, including why the problems identified by the Fed did not stop after the central bank issued its first set of matters requiring attention. The existence of those initial warnings was reported earlier by Bloomberg. It will also look at whether supervisors believed they had authority to escalate the issue, and if they raised the problems to the level of the Federal Reserve Board.The Fed’s report is expected to disclose information about Silicon Valley Bank that is usually kept private as part of the confidential bank oversight process. It will also include any recommendations for regulatory and supervisory fixes.The bank’s downfall and the chain reaction it set off is also likely to result in a broader push for stricter bank oversight. Mr. Barr was already performing a “holistic review” of Fed regulation, and the fact that a bank that was large but not enormous could create so many problems in the financial system is likely to inform the results.Typically, banks with fewer than $250 billion in assets are excluded from the most onerous parts of bank oversight — and that has been even more true since a “tailoring” law that passed in 2018 during the Trump administration and was put in place by the Fed in 2019. Those changes left smaller banks with less stringent rules.Silicon Valley Bank was still below that threshold, and its collapse underlined that even banks that are not large enough to be deemed globally systemic can cause sweeping problems in the American banking system.As a result, Fed officials could consider tighter rules for those big, but not huge, banks. Among them: Officials could ask whether banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets should have to hold more capital when the market price of their bond holdings drops — an “unrealized loss.” Such a tweak would most likely require a phase-in period, since it would be a substantial change.But as the Fed works to complete its review of what went wrong at Silicon Valley Bank and come up with next steps, it is facing intense political blowback for failing to arrest the problems.Supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw Silicon Valley Bank, issued six citations in 2021.Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesSome of the concerns center on the fact that the bank’s chief executive, Greg Becker, sat on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s board of directors until March 10. While board members do not play a role in bank supervision, the optics of the situation are bad.“One of the most absurd aspects of the Silicon Valley bank failure is that its CEO was a director of the same body in charge of regulating it,” Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, announcing that he would be “introducing a bill to end this conflict of interest by banning big bank CEOs from serving on Fed boards.”Other worries center on whether Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, allowed too much deregulation during the Trump administration. Randal K. Quarles, who was the Fed’s vice chair for supervision from 2017 to 2021, carried out a 2018 regulatory rollback law in an expansive way that some onlookers at the time warned would weaken the banking system.Mr. Powell typically defers to the Fed’s supervisory vice chair on regulatory matters, and he did not vote against those changes. Lael Brainard, then a Fed governor and now a top White House economic adviser, did vote against some of the tweaks — and flagged them as potentially dangerous in dissenting statements.“The crisis demonstrated clearly that the distress of even noncomplex large banking organizations generally manifests first in liquidity stress and quickly transmits contagion through the financial system,” she warned.Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, has asked for an independent review of what happened at Silicon Valley Bank and has urged that Mr. Powell not be involved in that effort.  He “bears direct responsibility for — and has a long record of failure involving” bank regulation, she wrote in a letter on Sunday.Maureen Farrell More

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    Banking Crisis Hangs Over Economy, Rekindling Recession Fear

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    Borrowing could become tougher, a particular blow to small businesses — and a threat to the recovery’s staying power.The U.S. economic recovery has repeatedly defied predictions of an impending recession, withstanding supply-chain backlogs, labor shortages, global conflicts and the fastest increase in interest rates in decades.That resilience now faces a new test: a banking crisis that, at times over the past week, seemed poised to turn into a full-blown financial meltdown as oil prices plunged and investors poured money into U.S. government debt and other assets perceived as safe.Markets remained volatile on Friday — stocks had their worst day of the week — as leaders in Washington and on Wall Street sought to keep the crisis contained.Even if those efforts succeed — and veterans of previous crises cautioned that was a big “if” — economists said the episode would inevitably take a toll on hiring and investments as banks pulled back on lending, and businesses struggled to borrow money as a result. Some forecasters said the turmoil had already made a recession more likely.“There will be real and lasting economic repercussions from this, even if all the dust settles well,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “I would raise the probability of a recession given what’s happened in the last week.”At a minimum, the crisis has complicated the already delicate task facing officials at the Federal Reserve, who have been trying to slow the economy gradually in order to bring inflation to heel. That task is as urgent as ever: Government data on Tuesday showed that prices continued to rise at a rapid clip in February. But now policymakers must grapple with the risk that the Fed’s efforts to fight inflation could be destabilizing the financial system.They don’t have long to weigh their options: Fed officials will hold their next regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday amid unusual uncertainty about what they will do. As recently as 10 days ago, investors expected the central bank to reaccelerate its campaign of interest rate increases in response to stronger-than-expected economic data. Now, Fed watchers are debating whether the meeting will end with rates unchanged.The failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the midsize California institution, set the latest turmoil in motion.Ian C. Bates for The New York TimesThe notion that the rapid increase in interest rates could threaten financial stability is hardly new. In recent months, economists have remarked often that it is surprising that the Fed has been able to raise rates so much, so fast without severe disruptions to a marketplace that has grown used to rock-bottom borrowing costs.What was less expected is where the first crack showed: small and midsize U.S. banks, in theory among the most closely monitored and tightly regulated pieces of the global financial system.“I was surprised where the problem came, but I wasn’t surprised there was a problem,” Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and leading scholar of financial crises, said in an interview. In an essay in early January, he warned of the risk of a “looming financial contagion” as governments and businesses struggled to adjust to an era of higher interest rates.He said he did not expect a repeat of 2008, when the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market quickly engulfed virtually the entire global financial system. Banks around the world are better capitalized and better regulated than they were back then, and the economy itself is stronger.“Usually to have a more systemic financial crisis, you need more than one shoe to drop,” Professor Rogoff said. “Think of higher real interest rates as one shoe, but you need another.”Still, he and other experts said it was alarming that such severe problems could go undetected so long at Silicon Valley Bank, the midsize California institution whose failure set in motion the latest turmoil. That raises questions about what other threats could be lurking, perhaps in less regulated corners of finance such as real estate or private equity.“If we’re not on top of that, then what about some of these other, more shadowy parts of the financial system?” said Anil Kashyap, a University of Chicago economist who studies financial crises. Already, there are hints that the crisis may not be limited to the United States. Credit Suisse said on Thursday that it would borrow up to $54 billion from the Swiss National Bank after investors dumped its stock as fears arose about its financial health. The 166-year-old lender has faced a long series of scandals and missteps, and its problems aren’t directly related to those of Silicon Valley Bank and other U.S. institutions. But economists said the violent market reaction was a sign that investors were growing concerned about the stability of the broader system.Tougher lending standards could be a blow to small businesses and affect overall supply in the economy.Casey Steffens for The New York TimesThe turmoil in the financial world comes just as the economic recovery, at least in the United States, seemed to be gaining momentum. Consumer spending, which fell in late 2022, rebounded early this year. The housing market, which slumped in 2022 as mortgage rates rose, had shown signs of stabilizing. And despite high-profile layoffs at large tech companies, job growth has stayed strong or even accelerated in recent months. By early March, forecasters were raising their estimates of economic growth and marking down the risks of a recession, at least this year.‌Now, many of them are reversing course. Mr. Bryson, of Wells Fargo, said he now put the probability of a recession this year at about 65 percent, up from about 55 percent before the recent bank failures. Even Goldman Sachs, among the most optimistic forecasters on Wall Street in recent months, said Thursday that the chances of a recession had risen ‌10 percentage points, to 35 percent, as a result of the crisis and the resulting uncertainty.The most immediate impact is likely to be on lending. Small and midsize banks could tighten their lending standards and issue fewer loans, either in a voluntary effort to shore up their finances or in response to heightened scrutiny from regulators. That could be a blow to residential and commercial developers, manufacturers and other businesses that rely on debt to finance their day-to-day operations.Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said Thursday that the federal government was “monitoring very carefully” the health of the banking system and of credit conditions more broadly.“A more general problem that concerns us is the possibility that if banks are under stress, they might be reluctant to lend,” she told members of the Senate Finance Committee. That, she added, “could turn this into a source of significant downside economic risk.”Tighter credit is likely to be a particular challenge for small businesses, which typically don’t have ready access to other sources of financing, such as the corporate debt market, and which often rely on relationships with bankers who know their specific industry or local community. Some may be able to get loans from big banks, which have so far seemed largely immune from the problems facing smaller institutions. But they will almost certainly pay more to do so, and many businesses may not be able to obtain credit at all, forcing them to cut back on hiring, investing and spending.The housing market, which slumped in 2022 as mortgage rates rose, had shown signs of stabilizing before the banking crisis arose.Jennifer Pottheiser for The New York Times“It may be hard to replace those small and medium-size banks with other sources of capital,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan. “That, in turn, could hinder growth.”Slower growth, of course, is exactly what the Fed has been trying to achieve by raising interest rates — and tighter credit is one of the main channels through which monetary policy is believed to work. If businesses and consumers pull back activity, either because borrowing becomes more expensive or because they are nervous about the economy, that could, in theory, help the Fed bring inflation under control.But Philipp Schnabl, a New York University economist who has studied the recent banking problems, said policymakers had been trying to rein in the economy by crimping demand for goods and services. A financial upheaval, by contrast, could result in a sudden loss of access to credit. That tighter bank lending could also affect overall supply in the economy, which is hard to address through Fed policy.“We have been raising rates to affect aggregate demand,” he said. “Now, you get this credit crunch, but that’s coming from financial stability concerns.”Still, the U.S. economy retains sources of strength that could help cushion the latest blows. Households, in the aggregate, have ample savings and rising incomes. Businesses, after years of strong profits, have relatively little debt. And despite the struggles of their smaller peers, the biggest U.S. banks are on much firmer financial footing than they were in 2008.“I still believe — not just hope — that the damage to the real economy from this is going to be pretty limited,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “I can tell a very compelling story of why this is scary, but it should be OK.”Alan Rappeport More

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    Low Rates Were Meant to Last. Without Them, Finance Is In for a Rough Ride.

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    Economists expected inflation and rates to stay low for years. With Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion, Wall Street is starting to reckon with how wrong that prediction has proved.WASHINGTON — If a number defined the 2010s, it was 2 percent. Inflation, annual economic growth, and interest rates at their highest all hovered around that level — so persistently that economists, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street began to bet that the era of low-everything would last.That bet has gone bad. And with the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank, America is beginning to reckon with the consequences.Inflation surprised economists and policymakers by spiking after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and at 6 percent in February, it is proving difficult to stamp out. The Fed has lifted interest rates by 4.5 percentage points in just the past 12 months as it tries to slow the economy and wrestle price increases under control. The central bank’s decision next Wednesday could nudge rates even higher. And that jump in borrowing costs is catching some businesses, investors and households by surprise.Silicon Valley Bank is the most extreme example of an institution’s being caught off guard so far. The bank had amassed a big portfolio of long-term bonds, which pay more interest than shorter-term ones. But it wasn’t paying to sufficiently protect its assets against the possibility of an interest rate spike — and when rates jumped, it found the market value of its holdings seriously dented. The reason: Why would investors want those old bonds when they could buy new ones at more attractive rates?Those impending financial losses helped to spook investors, fueling a bank run that collapsed the institution and shot tremors across the American banking system.The bank’s mistake was a bad — and ultimately lethal — one. But it wasn’t wholly unique.Many banks are holding big portfolios of long-term bonds that are worth a lot less than their original value. U.S. banks were sitting on $620 billion in unrealized losses from securities that had dropped in price at the end of 2022, based on Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data, with many regional banks facing big hits.Adding in other potential losses, including on mortgages that were extended when rates were low, economists at New York University have estimated that the total may be more like $1.75 trillion. Banks can offset that with higher earnings on deposits — but that doesn’t work if depositors pull their money out, as in Silicon Valley Bank’s case.“How worried should we be comes down to: How likely is it that the deposit franchise leaves?” said Alexi Savov, who wrote the analysis with his colleague Philipp Schnabl.Regulators are conscious of that potentially broad interest rate risk. The Fed unveiled an emergency loan program on Sunday night that will offer banks cash in exchange for their bonds, treating them as though they were still worth their original value in the process. The setup will allow banks to temporarily escape the squeeze they are feeling as interest rates rise.But even if the Fed succeeds at neutralizing the threat of bank runs tied to rising rates, it is likely that other vulnerabilities grew during decades of relatively low interest rates. That could trigger more problems at a time when borrowing costs are substantially higher.Impending financial losses helped to spook investors, fueling a bank run that collapsed Silicon Valley Bank and shot tremors across the U.S. banking system.Jason Henry for The New York Times“There’s an old saying: Whenever the Fed hits the brakes, someone goes through the windshield,” said Michael Feroli, chief economist at J.P. Morgan. “You just never know who it’s going to be.”America has gone through regular bouts of financial pain brought about by rising interest rates. A jump in rates has been blamed for helping to burst the bubble in technology stocks in the early 2000s, and for contributing to the decline in house prices that helped to set off the crash in 2008.Even more closely related to the current moment, a sharp rise in interest rates in the 1970s and 1980s caused acute problems in the savings and loan industry that ended only when the government intervened.There’s a simple logic behind the financial problems that arise from rising interest rates. When borrowing costs are very low, people and businesses need to take on more risk to earn money on their cash — and that typically means that they tie up their money for longer or they throw their cash behind risky ventures.When the Fed raises interest rates to cool the economy and control inflation, though, money moves toward the comparative safety of government bonds and other steady investments. They suddenly pay more, and they seem like a surer bet in a world where the central bank is trying to slow the economy.That helps to explain what is happening in the technology sector in 2023, for example. Investors have pulled back from tech company stocks, which tend to have values that are predicated on expectations for growth. Betting on prospective profits is suddenly less attractive in a higher-rate environment.A more challenging business and financial backdrop has quickly translated into a souring job market in technology. Companies have been making high-profile layoffs, with Meta announcing a fresh round just this week.That is more or less the way Fed rate moves are supposed to work: They diminish growth prospects and make access to financing tougher, curb business expansions, cost jobs and end up slowing demand throughout the economy. Slower demand makes for weaker inflation.But sometimes the pain does not play out in such an orderly and predictable way, as the trouble in the banking system makes clear.“This just teaches you that we really have these blind spots,” said Jeremy Stein, a former Fed governor who is now at Harvard. “You put more pressure on the pipes, and something is going to crack — but you never know where it is going to be.”The Fed was conscious that some banks could face trouble as rates rose meaningfully for the first time in years.“The industry’s lack of recent experience with rising and more volatile interest rates, coupled with material levels of market uncertainty, presents challenges for all banks,” Carl White, the senior vice president of the supervision, credit and learning division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, wrote in a research note in November. That was true “regardless of size or complexity.”But it has been years since the central bank formally tested for a scenario of rising rates in big banks’ formal stress tests, which examine their expected health in the event of trouble. While smaller regional banks aren’t subject to those tests, the decision not to test for rate risk is evidence of a broader reality: Everyone, policymakers included, spent years assuming that rates would not go back up.When borrowing costs are very low, people and businesses need to take on more risk to earn money on their cash.John Taggart for The New York TimesIn their economic forecasts a year ago, even after months of accelerating inflation, Fed officials projected that interest rates would peak at 2.8 percent before falling back to 2.4 percent in the longer run.That owed to both recent experience and to the economy’s fundamentals: Inequality is high and the population is aging, two forces that mean there are lots of savings sloshing around the economy and looking for a safe place to park. Such forces tend to reduce interest rates.The pandemic’s downswing upended those forecasts, and it is not clear when rates will get back on the lower-for-longer track. While central bankers still anticipate that borrowing costs will hover around 2.5 percent in the long run, for now they have pledged to keep them high for a long time — until inflation is well on its way back down to 2 percent.Yet the fact that unexpectedly high interest rates are putting a squeeze on the financial system could complicate those plans. The Fed will release fresh economic forecasts alongside its rates decision next week, providing a snapshot of how its policymakers view the changing landscape.Central bankers had previously hinted that they might raise interest rates even higher than the roughly 5 percent that they had previously forecast this year as inflation shows staying power and the job market remains strong. Whether they will be able to stick with that plan in a world colored by financial upheaval is unclear. Officials may want to tread lightly at a time of uncertainty and the threat of financial chaos.“There’s sometimes this sense that the world works like engineering,” Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, said of the way central bankers think about monetary policy. “How the machine actually works is such a complex and fickle thing that you have to be paying attention.”And policymakers are likely to be attuned to other pockets of risk in the financial system as rates climb: Mr. Stein, for instance, had expected rate-related weakness to show up in bond funds and was surprised to see the pain surface in the banking system instead.“Whether it is stabler than we thought, or we just haven’t hit the air pocket yet, I don’t know,” he said.Joe Rennison More

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    Jobs Report Gives Fed a Mixed Signal Ahead of Its March Decision

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    The Federal Reserve is anxiously parsing incoming data as it decides between a small or a large rate move this month.Federal Reserve officials received a complicated signal from February’s employment report, which showed that job growth retained substantial momentum nearly a year into the central bank’s campaign to slow the economy and cool rapid inflation. But it also included details hinting that the softening the Fed has been trying to achieve may be coming.Policymakers have raised interest rates from near zero to above 4.5 percent over the past year, and Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, signaled this week that the size of the central bank’s March 22 rate move would hinge on the strength of incoming data — making Friday’s employment report a critical focal point for investors.But the figures painted a complicated picture. Employers added 311,000 workers last month, which were more than the 225,000 expected and a sign that the pace of hiring has cooled little, if at all, over the past year. At the same time, wage growth moderated to its slowest monthly pace since February 2022, and the unemployment rate ticked up slightly.“It’s exactly what I wasn’t hoping for, which is a mixed report,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan.That makes determining the Fed’s next steps more challenging.Officials raised rates in large three-quarter-point increments four times in 2022, making borrowing sharply more expensive in hopes of restraining a hot economy. But they had been slowing the pace of adjustment for months, stepping down to half a point in December and a quarter point in February. Policymakers thought they had reached the point where interest rates were high enough to significantly cool the economy, so they expected to soon stop raising rates and simply hold them at a high level for a while.But data from early 2023 have surprised the central bank. The labor market, inflation and consumer spending all showed unexpected signs of strength, which made policymakers question whether they might need to raise rates by more — or even return to a faster pace of adjustment. That’s why central bankers have been looking to incoming data from February for a sense of whether the robust January figures were a one-off or a genuine sign of strength.Employers added 311,000 workers last month, which were more than expected and a sign that the pace of hiring has cooled little.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes,” Mr. Powell told lawmakers this week, emphasizing that “no decision has been made on this.”Friday’s figures suggested that hiring is genuinely resilient: Employers added more than half a million workers in the first month of the year, even after revisions.But the slowdown in wage growth could be good news for the central bank. Officials have been nervously eyeing rapid wage gains, fretting that it will be difficult for inflation to cool when employers are paying more and trying to make up for those climbing labor bills by passing the costs along to consumers.That said, a closely watched measure of wages for production workers who are not managers — rank-and-file employees, basically — held up. Wage data bounce around, and economists often watch that measure for a clearer reading of underlying momentum in pay gains.Priya Misra, head of global rates strategy at TD Securities, said she thought the report made the size of the Fed’s next rate move a “tossup.” The pace of hiring is likely to suggest to officials that the labor market is still hot, but the other details could give them some room to watch and wait.“It’s not an obvious slam dunk for 50,” Ms. Misra said, referring to a half-point move.The upshot, she said, is that investors will need to closely watch the Consumer Price Index report that is scheduled for release on Tuesday. The fresh figures will show how hot inflation was running in February, giving central bankers a final critical reading on where the American economy stands heading into their decision.“It makes this the most important C.P.I. report — again,” Ms. Misra said.Economists in a Bloomberg survey expect monthly inflation readings — which give a clearer sense of iterative progress on cooling price increases — to slow on an overall basis, but to hold steady at 0.4 percent after volatile food and fuel prices are stripped out.The State of Jobs in the United StatesThe labor market continues to display strength, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Mislabeling Managers: New evidence shows that many employers are mislabeling rank-and-file workers as managers to avoid paying them overtime.Energy Sector: Solar, wind, geothermal, battery and other alternative-energy businesses are snapping up workers from fossil fuel companies, where employment has fallen.Elite Hedge Funds: As workers around the country negotiate severance packages, employees in a tiny and influential corner of Wall Street are being promised some of their biggest paydays ever.Immigration: The flow of immigrants and refugees into the United States has ramped up, helping to replenish the American labor force. But visa backlogs are still posing challenges.One challenge is that the numbers will come out during the Fed’s pre-meeting quiet period, which is in place all of next week, so central bankers will not be able to tell the world how they are interpreting the new data.Further complicating the picture: Glimmers of stress are surfacing in the banking system, ones that are tied to the Fed’s rapid rate moves over the past 12 months. Silicon Valley Bank, which lent to tech start-ups and failed on Friday, was squeezed partly by the jump in interest rates.That development — and the possibility that it might herald trouble at other regional banks — could also matter to how the Fed understands the rate outlook.“It shows us: No, we haven’t really digested all of the effects of what the Fed has done so far,” said Aneta Markowska, chief financial economist at Jefferies. “There’s still a lot of policy pain in the pipeline that hasn’t hit the economy yet.”William Dudley, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said there are probably other banks that loaded up on longer-term assets when rates were low and are now suffering from that as short-term borrowing costs rise. That makes those older assets less attractive — and less valuable — if a bank has to sell them to raise cash.But he said that Silicon Valley Bank was probably an extreme example, and that it’s possible the whole situation will have blown over by the time the Fed meets next.“By a week and a half from now, this whole thing could be over,” he said. He added, though, that he didn’t have much clarity on how big the Fed’s next rate move would be, in any case.“I am totally confused about the Fed at this point,” he said. More

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    Here’s What the Fed Chair Said This Week, and Why It Matters

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    Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, opened the door to a more aggressive policy path — but emphasized that it depended on incoming data.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, used his testimony before lawmakers this week to lay out a more aggressive path ahead for American monetary policy as the central bank tries to combat stubbornly rapid inflation.Mr. Powell, who spoke before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, explained that the economy had been more resilient — and inflation had shown more staying power — than expected.He signaled that he and his colleagues were prepared to respond by raising rates, and doing so more quickly if needed, though he emphasized on Wednesday that no decision had been made ahead of the central bank’s meeting on March 22. Mr. Powell made clear the next move would hinge on a series of job market and inflation data points set for release over the next week.Stocks initially swooned and a common recession indicator flashed red on Tuesday as investors marked up their expectations for how high Fed rates would rise in 2023 and increasingly bet on a larger March move. But they recovered on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 ending the day slightly up.Here are the key points that emerged over the two-day testimony.Rates may climb faster.Mr. Powell surprised many investors when he suggested that the pace of rate increases could pick back up.“If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes,” Mr. Powell told lawmakers in both chambers. He was careful on Wednesday to underscore that “no decision has been made on this.”While Mr. Powell avoided promising anything, his comments suggested that the Fed could lift rates by a half-point in March if data reports over the coming days remained hot — which would signify a reversal.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Jerome Powell Says Interest Rate Raises Likely to Be Higher Than Expected

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    In light of recent strong data, Jerome H. Powell said the Federal Reserve was likely to raise rates higher than expected.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, made clear on Tuesday that the central bank is prepared to react to recent signs of economic strength by raising interest rates higher than previously expected and, if incoming data remain hot, potentially returning to a quicker pace of rate increases.Mr. Powell, in remarks before the Senate Banking Committee, also noted that the Fed’s fight against inflation was “very likely” to come at some cost to the labor market.His comments were the clearest acknowledgment yet that recent reports showing inflation remains stubborn and the job market remains resilient are likely to shake up the policy trajectory for America’s central bank.The Fed raised interest rates last year at the fastest pace since the 1980s, pushing borrowing costs above 4.5 percent, from near zero. That initially seemed to be slowing consumer and business demand and helping inflation to moderate. But a number of recent economic reports have suggested that inflation did not weaken as much as expected last year and remained faster than expected in January, while other data showed hiring remains strong and consumer spending picked up at the start of the year.While some of that momentum could have owed to mild January weather — conditions allowed for shopping trips and construction — Mr. Powell said the unexpected strength would probably require a stronger policy response from the Fed.“The process of getting inflation back down to 2 percent has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy,” he told the committee. “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.”Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested that the Fed was trying to “throw people out of work” and that millions of people stood to lose their jobs if unemployment rose as much as central bankers expected.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesFed officials projected in December that rates would rise to a peak of 5 to 5.25 percent, with a few penciling in a slightly higher 5.25 to 5.5 percent. Mr. Powell suggested that the peak rate would need to be adjusted by more than that, without specifying how much more.He even opened the door to faster rate increases if incoming data — which include a jobs report on Friday and a fresh inflation report due next week — remain hot. The Fed repeatedly raised rates by three-quarters of a point in 2022, but slowed to half a point in December and a quarter point in early February.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Mislabeling Managers: New evidence shows that many employers are mislabeling rank-and-file workers as managers to avoid paying them overtime.Energy Sector: Solar, wind, geothermal, battery and other alternative-energy businesses are snapping up workers from fossil fuel companies, where employment has fallen.Elite Hedge Funds: As workers around the country negotiate severance packages, employees in a tiny and influential corner of Wall Street are being promised some of their biggest paydays ever.Immigration: The flow of immigrants and refugees into the United States has ramped up, helping to replenish the American labor force. But visa backlogs are still posing challenges.“If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes,” Mr. Powell said.Before his remarks, markets were heavily prepared for a quarter-point move at the Fed’s March 21-22 meeting. After his opening testimony, investors increasingly bet that the central bank would make a half-point move in March, stock prices lurched lower, and a closely watched Wall Street recession indicator pointed to a greater chance of a downturn. The S&P 500 ended the day down about 1.5 percent.While Mr. Powell predicated any decision to pick up the pace of rate increases on incoming data, even opening the door to the possibility made it clear that “it’s definitely a policy option they’re considering pretty actively,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan.Mr. Feroli said a decision to accelerate rate moves might stoke uncertainty about what would come next: Will the Fed stick with half-point moves in May, for instance?“It raises a lot of questions,” he said.Blerina Uruci, chief U.S. economist at T. Rowe Price, previously thought the Fed would stop lifting interest rates around 5.75 percent but now thinks there is a growing chance they will rise above 6 percent, she said. She thinks that if Fed officials speed up rate increases in March, they may feel the need to keep the moves quick in May.“Otherwise, the Fed runs the risk of looking like they’re flip-flopping around,” Ms. Uruci said.While the Fed typically avoids making too much of any single month’s data, Mr. Powell signaled that recent reports had caused concern both because signs of continued momentum were broad-based and because revisions made a slowdown late in 2022 look less pronounced.“The breadth of the reversal along with revisions to the previous quarter suggests that inflationary pressures are running higher than expected at the time of our previous” meeting, Mr. Powell said.He reiterated that there were some hopeful developments: Goods inflation has slowed, and rent inflation, while high, appears poised to cool down this year.And Mr. Powell noted on Tuesday that officials knew it took time for the full effects of monetary policy to be felt, and were taking that into account as they thought about future policy.Still, he underlined that “there is little sign of disinflation thus far” in services outside of housing, which include purchases ranging from restaurant meals and travel to manicures. The Fed has been turning to that measure more and more as a signal of how strong underlying price pressures remain in the economy.“Nothing about the data suggests to me that we’ve tightened too much,” Mr. Powell said in response to lawmaker questions. “Indeed, it suggests that we still have work to do.”When the Fed raises interest rates, it slows consumer spending on big credit-based purchases like houses and cars and can dissuade businesses from expanding on borrowed money. As demand for products and demand for workers cool, wage growth eases and unemployment may even rise, further slowing consumption and causing a broader moderation in the economy.But so far, the job market has been very resilient to the Fed’s moves, with the lowest unemployment rate since 1969, rapid hiring and robust pay gains.Mr. Powell said wage growth — while it had moderated somewhat — remained too strong to be consistent with a return to 2 percent inflation. When companies are paying more, they are likely to charge more to cover their labor bills.“Strong wage growth is good for workers, but only if it is not eroded by inflation,” Mr. Powell said.Despite such explanations, some lawmakers grilled the Fed chair on Tuesday over what the central bank expected to do to the labor market with its policy adjustments.Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, suggested that the Fed was trying to “throw people out of work” and that millions of people stood to lose their jobs if unemployment rose as much as central bankers expected.“I would explain to people, more broadly, that inflation is extremely high, and that it is hurting the working people of this nation badly,” Mr. Powell said. “We are taking the only measures that we have to bring inflation down.”When Ms. Warren continued to press him on the Fed’s plan, Mr. Powell responded that the central bank was doing what policymakers believed was necessary.“Will working people be better off if we just walk away from our jobs and inflation remains 5, 6 percent?” Mr. Powell asked.He also underlined that the Fed does “not seek, and we don’t believe that we need to have,” a “very significant” downturn in the labor market, because there are many job openings, so it is possible that the labor market could cool quite a bit without outright job losses.“Other business cycles had quite different back stories than this one,” he said. “We’re going to have to find out whether that matters or not.”Joe Rennison More