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    Jerome Powell Is Popular. His War on Inflation Could Change That.

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    Jerome H. Powell, who is well liked across the political spectrum, is presiding over the fastest interest rate increases in generations, with another one expected this week.Jerome H. Powell has for years enjoyed something rare in a politically divided Washington: widespread popularity.While officially a Republican, Mr. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, is a political centrist who has been nominated to prominent jobs at the central bank by President Biden as well as Presidents Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. When Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Powell on Twitter in 2018 and 2019, criticizing him for not doing enough to stimulate the economy, liberal and conservative commentators rushed to his defense. When he was up for renomination, people across the political spectrum argued his case.The acclaim has extended beyond the capital. After delivering an economics-heavy speech on the labor market to a crowd of businesspeople in Rhode Island in 2019, Mr. Powell received a standing ovation — not a typical response to central bank oration.But the applause could soon stop.That is because Mr. Powell, who is in his fifth year of leading the world’s most important central bank, is presiding over the fastest interest rate increases in generations as the Fed tries to wrestle rapid inflation under control. The Fed is expected to raise rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point on Wednesday. And by next year, borrowing costs are expected to climb to nearly 5 percent, up from near zero as recently as March.The last time the central bank adjusted policy that quickly, in the 1980s, it inflicted economic pain that inspired intense backlash against the sitting chair, Paul A. Volcker. And while the rate increases were more extreme back then, the Fed’s moves were under far less public scrutiny than they are today, when global financial markets hang on every word coming from the central bank.Mr. Powell, 69, is acutely aware of his own reputation and that of the institution he leads. He reads four newspapers every morning, along with a set of news clips about the Fed that his staff sends him by 6 a.m. He keeps a careful eye on the debate economists are having on central bank policy, including the recent back-and-forth on Twitter between Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, and Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, about whether inflation is poised to subside so much that the Fed risks overdoing it.His consciousness of how the Fed’s moves are being received has at times prompted Mr. Powell to adjust course. He pivoted toward a gentler policy stance in early 2019 after markets reacted sharply to his Dec. 19, 2018, news conference, at which the Fed forecast that it would keep removing its support from the economy. And his awareness has shaped his communication style: Mr. Powell has tried to reach ordinary Americans, delivering plain-spoken remarks that acknowledge how economic developments shape their lives.Mr. Powell’s responsiveness has often been viewed as one of his strengths — but it is now prompting some economists and investors to question whether he will be able to stick by the central bank’s plan to wrangle inflation.Once today’s rate increases translate into palpable financial or economic pain, criticism is likely to come in hard and fast as recession risks intensify and as everyday Americans find their jobs at risk and their wage growth slowing. Already, some lawmakers and progressive economists are urging Mr. Powell to stop his rate campaign for the good of the American worker.Fed policy is made by committee, but the chair is the central bank’s most visible and powerful policymaker, and complaints are likely to be lobbed at Mr. Powell personally. As markets and the public react, some Fed watchers think he will back off before inflation is well and truly stamped out of the system.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    GDP Rose in 3rd Quarter, but US Recession Fears Persist

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    Gross Domestic Product
    Note: Quarterly changes in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflationSource: Bureau of Economic AnalysisBy The New York TimesEconomic growth rebounded over the summer, the latest government data shows, but slowing consumer spending and a rapidly weakening housing market mean the report will do little to ease fears of a looming recession.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, rose 0.6 percent in the third quarter, a 2.6 percent annual rate of growth, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the first increase after two consecutive quarterly contractions.But the third-quarter figures were skewed by the international trade component, which often exhibits big swings from one period to the next. Economists tend to focus on less volatile components, which have showed the recovery steadily losing momentum as the year has progressed.“Ignore the headline number — growth rates are slowing,” said Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America. “It wouldn’t take much further slowing from here to tip the economy into a recession.”Consumer spending, the bedrock of the U.S. economy, rose just 0.4 percent in the third quarter, down from a 0.5 percent increase in the quarter before, as rapid inflation ate away at households’ spending power.The slowdown in spending will be welcome news for policymakers at the Federal Reserve, who have been trying to cool off consumer demand to tamp down inflation. The central bank has raised interest rates aggressively in recent months, and is expected to announce another big increase at its meeting next week.But forecasters and investors have become increasingly concerned that the Fed will go too far in its efforts to slow the economy and will end up causing a recession. Consumer spending has continued to increase despite higher interest rates and rising prices, but it is unclear how long that can last.“‘Borrowed time’ is how I would describe the consumer right now,” said Tim Quinlan, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Credit card borrowing is up, saving is down, our costs are rising faster than our paychecks are.”The impact of rising interest rates is clear in the housing market, where home building and sales have both slowed sharply in recent months. The third quarter was in some sense a mirror image of the first quarter, when G.D.P. shrank but consumer spending was strong. In both cases, the swings were driven by international trade. Imports — which don’t count toward domestic production figures — soared early this year as the strong economic recovery led Americans to buy more goods from overseas. Exports slumped as the rest of the world recovered more slowly from the pandemic.Both trends have begun to reverse as American consumers have shifted more of their spending toward services and away from imported goods, and as foreign demand for American-made goods has recovered. Supply-chain disruptions have added to the volatility, leading to big swings in the data from quarter to quarter.Few economists expect the strong trade figures from the third quarter to continue, especially because the strong dollar will make American goods less attractive overseas. More

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    The Fed, Staring Down Two Big Choices, Charts an Aggressive Path

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    Federal Reserve officials are barreling toward another three-quarter-point increase in November, and they may decide to do more next year.Federal Reserve officials have coalesced around a plan to raise interest rates by three-quarters of a point next month as policymakers grow alarmed by the staying power of rapid price increases — and increasingly worried that inflation is now feeding on itself.Such concerns could also prompt the Fed to raise rates at least slightly higher next year than previously forecast as officials face two huge choices at their coming meetings: when to slow rapid rate increases and when to stop them altogether.Central bankers had expected to debate slowing down at their November meeting, but a rash of recent data suggesting that the labor market is still strong and that inflation is unrelenting has them poised to delay serious discussion of a smaller move for at least a month. The conversation about whether to scale back is now more likely to happen in December. Investors have entirely priced in a fourth consecutive three-quarter-point move at the Fed’s Nov. 1-2 meeting, and officials have made no effort to change that expectation.Officials may also feel the need to push rates higher than they had expected as recently as September, as inflation remains stubborn even in the face of substantial moves to try to wrestle it under control. While the central bank had penciled in a peak rate of 4.6 percent next year, that could nudge up depending on incoming data. Rates are now set around 3.1 percent, and the Fed’s next forecast will be released in December.Fed officials have grown steadily more aggressive in their battle against inflation this year, as the price burst sweeping the globe has proved more persistent than just about anyone expected. And for now, they have little reason to let up: A report last week showed that Consumer Price Index prices climbed by 6.6 percent over the year through September even after food and fuel prices were stripped out — a new 40-year high for that closely watched core index.“It’s a little bit hard to slow down without an apparent reason,” said Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chair who is now at Princeton University.Mr. Blinder expects the Fed to make another big move at this coming meeting. “If you were Jay Powell and the Fed and slowed to 50, what would you say?” he said. “They can’t say we’ve seen progress on inflation. That would be laughed out of court.”Policymakers came into the year expecting to barely lift interest rates in 2022, forecasting that they would close out the year below 1 percent, up from around zero. But as inflation ratcheted steadily higher and then plateaued near the quickest pace since the early 1980s, they became more determined to stamp it out, even if doing so comes at a near-term cost to the economy.Consumer prices continue to increase rapidly month after month. Those increases are driven by a broad array of goods and services and have been stubborn even in the face of the Fed’s policy moves.John Taggart for The New York TimesOfficials are afraid that if they allow fast inflation to linger, it will become a permanent feature of the American economy. Workers might ask for bigger wage increases each year if they think that costs will steadily increase. Companies, anticipating higher wage bills and feeling confident that consumers will not be shocked by price increases, might increase what they’re charging more drastically and regularly.“The longer the current bout of high inflation continues, the greater the chance that expectations of higher inflation will become entrenched,” Mr. Powell, the Fed chair, warned at his news conference last month.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    With So Much Riding on the Fed’s Moves, It’s Hard to Know How to Invest

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    Where the markets go from here depends on whether and how deftly the Federal Reserve pivots from its hawkish stance.Making money was easy for investors when they could still plausibly believe that the Federal Reserve might back down on its aggressive campaign to subdue inflation at any cost. But harsh words from the Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, backed by a string of large interest rate increases, finally convinced markets that the central bank meant business, sending stock and bond prices tumbling.A nervous confidence returned as October began, with stocks experiencing a big two-day rally, but then prices sank anew. Investors at first seemed more confident that the Fed would reverse course, but anxiety returned as they worried about how much damage would be inflicted before that happened. Where the markets go from here, and how to position an investment portfolio, depends on whether and how deftly the Fed changes its strategy.“A crescendo of factors is coming together that makes me think we’re going to have another few weeks of pain before the Fed capitulates,” said Marko Papic, chief strategist at the Clocktower Group.Mr. Papic thinks a dovish turn may come soon, as the Fed signals that it would settle for inflation two or three percentage points above its 2 percent target.Others think more pain lies ahead, maybe a lot more. A prerequisite for a pivot might be a “credit event,” said Komal Sri-Kumar, president of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies, meaning a default by a large investment firm or corporate or government borrower, often with severe consequences. Mutual FundsA glance at mutual fund performance in the third quarter. More

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    Labor Hoarding Could be Good News for the Economy

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    PROVO, Utah — Chad Pritchard and his colleagues are trying everything to staff their pizza shop and bistro, and as they do, they have turned to a new tactic: They avoid firing employees at all costs.Infractions that previously would have led to a quick dismissal no longer do at the chef’s two places, Fat Daddy’s Pizzeria and Bistro Provenance. Consistent transportation issues have ceased to be a deal breaker. Workers who show up drunk these days are sent home to sober up.Employers in Provo, a college town at the base of the Rocky Mountains where unemployment is near the lowest in the nation at 1.9 percent, have no room to lose workers. Bistro Provenance, which opened in September, has been unable to hire enough employees to open for lunch at all, or for dinner on Sundays and Mondays. The workers it has are often new to the industry, or young: On a recent Wednesday night, a 17-year-old could be found torching a crème brûlée.Down the street, Mr. Pritchard’s pizza shop is now relying on an outside cleaner to help his thin staff tidy up. And up and down the wide avenue that separates the two restaurants, storefronts display “Help Wanted” signs or announce that the businesses have had to temporarily reduce their hours.Provo’s desperation for workers is an intense version of the labor crunch that has plagued employers nationwide over the past two years — one that has prompted changes in hiring and layoff practices that could have big implications for the U.S. economy. Policymakers are hoping that after struggling through the worst labor shortages America has experienced in at least several decades, employers will be hesitant to lay off workers even when the economy cools.Mr. Pritchard cannot hire enough employees to open the bistro for lunch at all, or for dinner on Sundays or Mondays.That may help prevent the kind of painful recession the Federal Reserve is hoping to avoid as it tries to combat persistent inflation. America’s economy is facing a marked — and intentional — slowdown as the Fed raises interest rates to chill demand and drive down price increases, the kind of pullback that would usually result in notably higher unemployment. But officials are still hoping to achieve a soft landing in which growth moderates without causing widespread job losses. A few have speculated that today’s staffing woes will help them to pull it off, as companies try harder than they have in the past to weather a slowdown without cutting staff.“Businesses that experienced unprecedented challenges restoring or expanding their work forces following the pandemic may be more inclined to make greater efforts to retain their employees than they normally would when facing a slowdown in economic activity,” Lael Brainard, the Fed’s vice chair, said in a recent speech. “This may mean that slowing aggregate demand will lead to a smaller increase in unemployment than we have seen in previous recessions.”For now, the job market remains strong. Employers added 263,000 workers in September, fewer than in recent months but more than was normal before the pandemic. Unemployment is at 3.5 percent, matching the lowest level in 50 years, and average hourly earnings picked up at a solid 5 percent clip compared with a year earlier.But that is expected to change. When the Fed raises interest rates and slows down the economy, it also weakens the labor market. Wage gains slow, paving the way for inflation to cool down, and in the process, unemployment rises — potentially, significantly.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.September Jobs Report: Job growth eased slightly in September but remained robust, indicating that the economy was maintaining momentum despite higher interest rates.A Cooling Market?: Unemployment is low and hiring is strong, but there are signs that the red-hot labor market may be coming off its boiling point.Factory Jobs: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed during the pandemic — and then some.Missing Workers: The labor market appears hot, but the supply of labor has fallen short, holding back the economy. Here is why.In the 1980s, when inflation was faster than it is now and entrenched, the Fed lifted rates drastically to roughly 20 percent and sent unemployment to above 10 percent. Few economists expect an outcome that severe this time since today’s inflation burst has been shorter-lived and rates are not expected to climb nearly as much.Mr. Pritchard demonstrated how to stretch pizza dough in Fat Daddy’s Pizzeria, his other restaurant in Provo.Many of the workers Mr. Pritchard and his business partner, Janine Coons, have hired are new to the industry or young.Still, Fed officials themselves expect unemployment to rise nearly a full percentage point to 4.4 percent next year — and policymakers have admitted that is a mild estimate, given how much they are trying to slow down the economy. Some economists have penciled in worse outcomes. Deutsche Bank, for instance, predicts 5.6 percent joblessness by the end of 2023.Labor hoarding offers a glimmer of hope that could help the Fed’s more benign unemployment forecast to become reality: Employers who are loath to jettison workers may help the labor market to slow down and wage growth to moderate without a spike in joblessness.“Companies are still confronting this enormous churn and losing people, and they don’t know what to do to hang on to people,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at the career site ZipRecruiter. “They’re definitely hanging on to workers for dear life just because they’re so scarce.”When the job market slows, employers will have recent, firsthand memories of how expensive it can be to recruit, and train, workers. Many employers may enter the slowdown still severely understaffed, particularly in industries like leisure and hospitality that have struggled to hire and retain workers since the start of the pandemic. Those factors may make them less likely to institute layoffs.And after long months of very tight labor markets — there are still nearly two open jobs for every unemployed worker — companies may be hesitant to believe that any uptick in worker availability will last.“There’s a lot of uncertainty about how big of a downturn are we facing,” said Benjamin Friedrich, an associate professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “You kind of want to be ready when opportunities arise. The way I think about labor hoarding is, it has option value.”Employers in Provo, where unemployment is near the lowest in the nation at 1.9 percent, have no room to lose workers.Instead of firing, businesses may look for other ways to trim costs. Mr. Pritchard in Provo and his business partner, Janine Coons, said that if business fell off, their first resort would be to cut hours. Their second would be taking pay cuts themselves. Firing would be a last resort.The pizzeria didn’t lay off workers during the pandemic, but Mr. Pritchard and Ms. Coons witnessed how punishing it can be to hire — and since all of their competitors have been learning the same lesson, they do not expect them to let go of their employees easily even if demand pulls back.“People aren’t going to fire people,” Mr. Pritchard said.But economists warned that what employers think they will do before a slowdown and what they actually do when they start to experience financial pain could be two different things.The idea that a tight labor market may leave businesses gun-shy about layoffs is untested. Some economists said that they could not recall any other downturn where employers broadly resisted culling their work force.“It would be a pretty notable change to how employers responded in the past,” said Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research for the career site Indeed.And even if they do not fire their full-time employees, companies have been making increased use of temporary or just-in-time help in recent months. Gusto, a small-business payroll and benefits platform, conducted an analysis of its clients and found that the ratio of contractors per employee had increased more than 60 percent since 2019.If the economy slows, gigs for those temporary workers could dry up, prompting them to begin searching for full-time jobs — possibly causing unemployment or underemployment to rise even if nobody is officially fired.Policymakers know a soft landing is a long shot. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, acknowledged during his last news conference that the Fed’s own estimate of how much unemployment might rise in a downturn was a “modest increase in the unemployment rate from a historical perspective, given the expected decline in inflation.”But he also added that “we see the current situation as outside of historical experience.”Bistro Provenance opened in September.Dinner service at the restaurant.The reasons for hope extend beyond labor hoarding. Because job openings are so unusually high right now, policymakers hope that workers can move into available positions even if some firms do begin layoffs as the labor market slows. Companies that have been desperate to hire for months — like Utah State Hospital in Provo — may swoop in to pick up anyone who is displaced.Dallas Earnshaw and his colleagues at the psychiatric hospital have been struggling mightily to hire enough nurse’s aides and other workers, though raising pay and loosening recruitment standards have helped around the edges. Because he cannot hire enough people to expand in needed ways, Mr. Earnshaw is poised to snap up employees if the labor market cools.“We’re desperate,” Mr. Earnshaw said.But for the moment, workers remain hard to find. At the bistro and pizza shop in downtown Provo, what worries Mr. Pritchard is that labor will become so expensive that — combined with rapid ingredient inflation — it will be hard or impossible to make a profit without lifting prices on pizzas or prime rib so much that consumers cannot bear the change.“What scares me most is not the economic slowdown,” he said. “It’s the hiring shortage that we have.” More

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    IMF Warns Rate Increases Could Spur A Global Recession

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    The International Monetary Fund lowered its growth outlook for 2023 and suggested that interest rate increases could spur a harsh global recession.The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the world economy was headed for “stormy waters” as it downgraded its global growth projections for next year and warned of a harsh worldwide recession if policymakers mishandled the fight against inflation.The grim assessment was detailed in the fund’s closely watched World Economic Outlook report, which was published as the world’s top economic officials traveled to Washington for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the I.M.F.The gathering arrives at a fraught time, as persistent supply chain disruptions and Russia’s war in Ukraine have led to a surge in energy and food prices over the last year, forcing central bankers to raise interest rates sharply to cool off their economies. Raising borrowing costs will probably tame inflation by slowing business investment and consumer spending, but higher rates could also yield a new set of problems: a cascade of recessions in rich nations and debt crises in poor ones.There are growing fears among policymakers that a so-called soft landing will elude the global economy.“In short, the worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” the International Monetary Fund report said.The organization maintained its most recent forecast that the global economy will grow 3.2 percent this year but now projects that will slow to 2.7 percent in 2023, slightly lower than the fund’s previous estimate. Both figures are big comedowns from the start of the year, when the fund projected global growth of 4.4 percent in 2022 and 3.8 percent in 2023, highlighting how the outlook has darkened in recent months.Inflation is expected to peak later this year and decline to 6.5 percent in 2023 from 8.8 percent in 2022.“The risks are accumulating,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, said during an interview in which he described the global economy as weakening. “We’re expecting about a third of the global economy to be in a technical recession.”The fund defines a “technical recession” as an economy that contracts for two consecutive quarters.Corporate America and Wall Street are already bracing for a downturn. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told CNBC on Monday that the United States was likely to be “in some kind of recession six to nine months from now.”Despite the dire tone of the International Monetary Fund’s forecasts, some private forecasters are predicting worse. The median economist in a Bloomberg survey expects 2.9 percent global growth this year and 2.5 percent next, as the euro area posts 0.2 percent growth in 2023 and Eastern Europe sees output fall.The I.M.F. report detailed how the economies of the United States, China and the 19 nations that use the euro are in various states of slowing, with effects rippling around the world.In the United States, inflation and rising interest rates are sapping consumer spending power, and housing activity is slowing as mortgage rates rise. A recent three-month dip in gasoline prices gave consumers some relief from inflation, but prices have started to rise again. There are concerns that trend could continue after the oil production cut announced last week by the international cartel known as OPEC Plus.The fund forecast that the U.S. economy would grow 1.6 percent this year, a downgrade from its previous projection, and 1 percent in 2023.In China, lockdowns to prevent the spread of Covid-19 continue to drag on its economy, which is projected to grow 3.2 percent this year after expanding 8.1 percent in 2021. Beyond its pandemic restrictions, China is facing a crisis in its property sector as cash-constrained homeowners refuse to repay loans on unfinished properties. The International Monetary Fund warned that China’s housing crunch would spill into the country’s domestic banking sector.Europe has been heavily reliant on Russia for energy and is facing sharp increases in oil and gas prices as additional sanctions go into effect later this year, just as the weather turns colder. Tourism has buttressed many of the economies of Europe in 2022, but uncertainty about energy prices has slowed manufacturing activity.Efforts to respond to inflation have led to policy proposals that have caused their own upheaval. Britain’s financial markets have faced turmoil after investors rebuffed the tax and spending policies of Prime Minister Liz Truss and her new government. The Bank of England stepped up its intervention in Britain’s bond market on Tuesday, the second expansion of its emergency measures in two days, as it warned of a “material risk” to the nation’s financial stability.Although Russia is responsible for much of the jump in food and energy prices, its economy is holding up better than previously projected even in the face of robust international sanctions. Russia’s economy is expected to contract 3.4 percent this year and 2.3 percent in 2023, much less than many economists believed earlier in the year.International Monetary Fund officials attributed that to the resilience of its energy exports, which have allowed Russia to stimulate its economy and prop up its labor market. Still, Russia is facing a deep recession, and its economic output is far lower than before the war.The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was top of mind as policymakers gathered in Washington.Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, condemned Russia’s actions during a meeting on Tuesday of finance ministers who convened to discuss the global food crisis. Russia’s finance minister, Anton Siluanov, attended the meeting virtually.“Putin’s regime and the officials who serve it — including those representing Russia at these gatherings — bear responsibility for the immense human suffering this war has caused,” Ms. Yellen said, according to a copy of her remarks provided by a Treasury Department official.Ms. Yellen called on the Group of 20, which represents the world’s major economies, to step up financial assistance to nations facing food shortages and said she would support a freeze on debt repayment for countries that needed it.The slowdowns in advanced economies are putting pressure on emerging markets, many of which were already fragile and facing high debt burdens as they recovered from the pandemic. Higher interest rates, soaring food costs and diminished demand for exports threaten to push millions of people into poverty. And low vaccination rates in places such as Africa mean that the health effects of the pandemic are persistent.“The poor are hurt the most,” David Malpass, the president of the World Bank, told reporters before this week’s meetings. “We’re in the midst of a crisis-facing development.”The rapid appreciation of the U.S. dollar, which is the strongest it has been since the early 2000s, also represents a threat to emerging markets. The International Monetary Fund urged policymakers in those countries to “batten down the hatches” and conserve their reserves of foreign currencies for when financial conditions worsen.As the pain piles up in rich and poor countries alike, policymakers are under increasing pressure to blunt the fallout, with central bankers — including those at the Federal Reserve — facing calls to curtail interest rate increases.Still, the fund warned that doing too little to combat inflation would make the fight more costly later. It also said governments should avoid enacting fiscal policies that would make inflation worse.In its report, the fund acknowledged that its forecasts faced considerable uncertainty. The further withdrawal of Russian gas supplies to Europe could depress the continent’s economies, debt crises in developing countries could worsen, and the pandemic could come roaring back.“Risks to the outlook remain unusually large and to the downside,” the report said.Jeanna Smialek More

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    U.K. Government Plans an Update to Its Tax and Spending Agenda

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    After an earlier announcement sent markets into a tailspin, the prime minister and the chancellor are under pressure to restore fiscal credibility.After days of confusion, Britain’s government said on Monday that the date for its next fiscal policy announcement would be moved up nearly a month and that it would provide, at the same time, a much-anticipated independent assessment of the policies’ impact on the nation’s economy and public finances.The chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, said he would publish his “medium-term fiscal plan” on Oct. 31, which would show how the government, under the new prime minister, Liz Truss, would bring down debt levels despite large spending plans and tax cuts that would be funded by borrowing.New economic and fiscal forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, a government watchdog, are to be published the same day.The move is aimed to reassure financial markets and the public of the new government’s fiscal credibility. Its first major economic announcement, a speech by Mr. Kwarteng on Sept. 23, was dominated by unfunded tax cuts at a time of high inflation, and it quickly sent markets into a tailspin: The British pound hit a record low against the dollar, and turmoil in the bond market led to higher mortgage rates and intervention from the Bank of England to protect pension funds.Since then, the government has canceled its plan to abolish the top income tax rate for the highest earners — the most surprising tax-cutting measure announced last month — and tried to restore its fiscal credibility, while maintaining its commitment to an agenda of using tax cuts and deregulation to speed economic growth.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.Truss’s Experiment Stumbles: Prime Minister Liz Truss says a mix of tax cuts and deregulation is needed to jump-start Britain’s sluggish economy. Investors, economists and some in her own party disagree.Mortgage Market: The uptick in interest rates roiled Britain’s mortgage market, leaving many homeowners calculating their potential future mortgage payments with alarm.Part of this rehabilitation effort included a promise to publish a more detailed fiscal plan focused on reducing debt and provide an independent analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility. But the date was set for Nov. 23 — too long to wait, said fellow Conservative Party members, opposition lawmakers and investors.Liz Truss, the prime minister, with Mr. Kwarteng visiting a construction site last week. Pool photo by Stefan RousseauLast week, it was widely reported that the date would be moved forward, and Mr. Kwarteng denied this. On Monday, he confirmed that the announcement would indeed arrive on Oct. 31.Two weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Kwarteng’s policy speech, the pound plummeted to $1.035 and speculation grew that it could reach parity with the dollar. The cancellation of the top tax rate cut, which the government argued had become a distraction from its overall growth plan, helped the currency rebound a bit.But that recovery has stalled. On Monday, the pound was trading around $1.10 amid skepticism that the government’s plan would expand the economy as promised, and that instead large public spending cuts would be necessary.Fitch Ratings said on Monday that it expected the British economy to contract 1 percent next year, after “extreme volatility” in British financial markets and the prospect of “sharply higher” interest rates. Last month, it forecast a 0.2 percent decline for next year.“Rising funding costs, tighter financing conditions, including for mortgage borrowers, and increased uncertainty will outweigh the impact of looser fiscal policy” next year, analysts at the ratings agency wrote. They expect Britain’s economy to enter a recession in this quarter. The agency has already changed its ratings outlook for Britain to negative.That was just one of many rebukes of the government’s plans. For example, the International Monetary Fund encouraged the government to re-evaluate the tax cuts, which it said would increase inequality.But Ms. Truss, seeking to reverse years of sluggish growth and weak productivity, has been clear that she wants to run the economy differently than her predecessors. One early decision was to fire the top civil servant in the Treasury, Tom Scholar, a move that rattled some analysts. On Monday, the government announced his successor, James Bowler, who will transfer from the international trade department but spent two decades at the Treasury previously.Even as the government makes conciliatory moves, there are signs of distress in financial markets. On Monday, the Bank of England said it would expand its intervention in the bond market. The bank will increase the size of the daily auctions in a bond-buying program that was set up to support pensions funds, after tumult in this market threatened Britain’s financial stability.Over the last eight trading days, the bank bought only about 5 billion pounds of long-dated government bonds in total, despite setting a limit of £5 billion a day. With markets wondering what will happen when the bond-buying operation ends on Friday, the central bank announced that it would expand its support. As well as increasing the auction sizes, it will set up a new collateral facility to try to ease liquidity problems faced by the pension funds. That facility will continue beyond this week.The announcement appeared to do little to ease the markets. On Monday, Britain’s bond prices kept falling, while the yield on 30-year bonds rose to 4.72 percent, once again approaching highs seen during the worst of the bond rout after the last fiscal statement.The financial district in London. The new government’s first major economic announcement, on Sept. 23, quickly sent markets into a tailspin.Alex Ingram for The New York Times More

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    U.S. Job Growth Eases, but Is Too Strong to Suit Investors

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    The gain of 263,000 was shy of recent monthly totals but still robust. Stocks fell on fears of a harder, longer Fed campaign to fight inflation.Job growth eased slightly in September but remained robust, indicating that the economy was maintaining momentum despite higher interest rates. But the strong showing left many investors unhappy because they saw signs that the fight against inflation may become tougher and more prolonged.Employers added 263,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said Friday, a decline from 315,000 in August. The number was the lowest since April 2021 but still solid by prepandemic standards. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, equaling a five-decade low.“If I had just woken up from a really long nap and seen these numbers, I would conclude that we still have one of the strongest job markets that we’ve ever enjoyed,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust.Officials at the Federal Reserve have been keeping a close eye on hiring and wages as they proceed with a series of rate increases meant to combat inflation. The job data indicates that, for now, they are doing so without tipping the economy into a recession that would throw millions out of work.But it also increases the prospect that the effort to subdue price increases will be more extended. For investors, that came as bad news, since higher interest rates raise costs for companies and weigh on stock prices.The S&P 500 recorded its worst one-day performance since mid-September, falling 2.8 percent and eroding gains from earlier in the week.Fed officials have signaled in speeches this week that they remain resolute in trying to wrestle inflation lower, and that they are waiting for clear evidence that the economy is headed back toward price stability before they pull back.Wage growth has subsided somewhat, at least compared with the trend a year ago. Average hourly earnings climbed 5 percent from a year earlier, roughly matching economists’ expectations but slowing down slightly from the prior annual reading.Wages are still growing, but less rapidly in some sectorsPercent change in earnings for nonmanagers since January 2019 by sector More