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    The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Gauge Cooled Notably in February

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    A closely watched measure of price increases provided encouraging news as the Fed considers when to stop raising rates.The measure of inflation most closely watched by the Federal Reserve slowed substantially in February, an encouraging sign for policymakers as they consider whether to raise interest rates further to slow the economy and bring price increases under control.The Personal Consumption Expenditures Index cooled to 5 percent on an annual basis in February, down from 5.3 percent in January and slightly lower than economists in a Bloomberg survey had forecast. It was the lowest reading for the measure since September 2021.After the removal of food and fuel prices, which are volatile from month to month, a “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying inflation trends also cooled more than expected on both an annual and a monthly basis.The data provides the latest evidence that inflation has turned a corner and is decelerating, though the process is gradual and bumpy at times. And the report is one of many that Fed officials will take into account as they approach their next interest rate decision, on May 3.Central bankers are watching how inflation, the labor market and consumer spending shape up. They will be monitoring financial markets and credit measures, too, to get a sense of how significantly recent bank failures are likely to weigh on lending, which could slow the economy.Fed officials have raised rates rapidly over the past year to try to rein in inflation, pushing them from near zero a year ago to just below 5 percent this month. But policymakers have suggested that they are nearing the end, forecasting just one more rate increase this year.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, hinted that officials could stop adjusting policy altogether if the problems in the banking sector weighed on the economy significantly enough, and policymakers this week have reiterated that they are watching closely to see how the banking problems impact the broader economy.“I will be particularly focused on assessing the evolution of credit conditions and their effects on the outlook for growth, employment and inflation,” John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said during a speech on Friday.But inflation remains unusually rapid: While it is slowing, it is still more than double the Fed’s 2 percent target. And the turmoil at banks seems to be abating, with government officials in recent days saying that deposit flows have stabilized.“Even with this report, the U.S. macro data is still on a stronger and hotter trajectory than appeared to be the case at the start of this year,” Krishna Guha, head of the global policy and central bank strategy team at Evercore ISI, wrote in a note after the release.In fact, officials speaking this week have suggested that they might need to do more to wrangle price increases, and they have pushed back on market speculation that they could lower rates this year.“Inflation remains too high, and recent indicators reinforce my view that there is more work to do,” Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said at a speech on Thursday. Ms. Collins does not vote on policy this year.The report on Friday also showed that consumer spending eased in February from the previous month. A measure of personal spending that is adjusted for inflation fell by 0.1 percent, matching what economists expected. But the data was revised up for January, suggesting that consumer spending climbed more rapidly than previously understood at the start of the year.And when it comes to prices, some economists warned against taking the February slowdown as a sign that the problem of rapid increases was close to being solved. A measure of inflation that excludes housing and energy — which the Fed monitors closely — has been firm in recent months.“That acceleration in underlying inflation measures is what has set off alarm bells at the Federal Reserve and prompted officials to stick to rate hikes, despite the recent credit market volatility,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, wrote in an analysis Friday.And Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, said much of the February slowdown came from price categories that are estimated using statistical techniques — and that can sometimes give a poor signal of the true trend.“I really would not bank on this number,” he said in an interview. “My expectation would be that we’ll probably see some of this bounce back next month.” More

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    Republicans Say Spending Is Fueling Inflation. The Fed Chair Disagrees.

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    Jerome H. Powell has said that snarled supply chains, an oil shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and shifts among American consumers are primarily behind rapid price growth.WASHINGTON — The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, has repeatedly undercut a central claim Republicans make as they seek sharp cuts in federal spending: Government spending is driving the nation’s still-hot inflation rate.Republican lawmakers say spending programs signed into law by President Biden are pumping too much money into the economy and fueling an annual inflation rate that was 6 percent in February — a decline from last year’s highs, but still well above historical norms. Mr. Powell disputed those claims in congressional testimony earlier this month and in a news conference on Wednesday, after the Fed announced it would once again raise interest rates in an effort to bring inflation back toward normal levels.Asked whether federal tax and spending policies were contributing to price growth, Mr. Powell pointed to a decline in federal spending from the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.“You have to look at the fiscal impulse from spending,” Mr. Powell said on Wednesday, referring to a measure of how much tax and spending policies are adding or subtracting to economic growth. “Fiscal impulse is actually not what’s driving inflation right now. It was at the beginning perhaps, but that’s not the story right now.”Instead, Mr. Powell — along with Mr. Biden and his advisers — says rapid price growth is primarily being driven by factors like snarled supply chains, an oil shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a shift among American consumers from spending money on services like travel and dining out to goods like furniture.Mr. Powell has also said the low unemployment rate was playing a role: “Some part of the high inflation that we’re experiencing is very likely related to an extremely tight labor market,” he told a House committee earlier this month.Increased consumer spending from savings could be pushing the cost of goods and services higher, White House economists said this week.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesBut the Fed chair’s position has not swayed congressional Republicans, who continue to press Mr. Biden to accept sharp spending reductions in exchange for raising the legal limit on how much the federal government can borrow.“Over the last two years, this administration’s reckless spending and failed economic policies have resulted in continued record inflation, soaring interest rates and an economy in a recessionary tailspin,” Representative Jodey C. Arrington, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Budget Committee, said at a hearing on Thursday.Republicans have attacked Mr. Biden over inflation since he took office. They denounced the $1.9 trillion economic aid package he signed into law early in 2021 and warned it would stoke damaging inflation. Mr. Biden’s advisers largely dismissed those warnings. So did Mr. Powell and Fed officials, who were holding interest rates near zero and taking other steps at the time to stoke a faster recovery from the pandemic recession.Economists generally agree that those stimulus efforts — carried out by the Fed, by Mr. Biden and in trillions of dollars of pandemic spending signed by Mr. Trump in 2020 — helped push the inflation rate to its highest level in 40 years last year. But researchers disagree on how large that effect was, and over how to divide the blame between federal government stimulus and Fed stimulus..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.One recent model, from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the University of Maryland and Harvard University, estimates that about a third of the inflation from December 2019 through June 2022 was caused by fiscal stimulus measures.Much of that stimulus has already made its way through the economy. Spending on pandemic aid to people, businesses and state and local governments fell sharply over the last year, as emergency programs signed into law by Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump expired. The federal budget deficit fell to about $1.4 trillion in the 2022 fiscal year from about $2.8 trillion in 2021.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Representative Jodey Arrington have attacked the Biden administration’s spending policies.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington estimates that in the first quarter of 2021, when Mr. Biden’s economic aid bill delivered direct payments, enhanced unemployment checks and other benefits to millions of Americans, government fiscal policy added 8 percentage points to economic growth. At the end of last year, the center estimates, declining government spending was actually reducing economic growth by 1 percentage point.Still, even Biden administration officials say some effects of Mr. Biden’s — and Mr. Trump’s — stimulus bills could still be contributing to higher prices. That’s because Americans did not immediately spend all the money they got from the government in 2020 and 2021. They saved some of it, and now, some consumers are drawing on those savings to buy things.Increased consumer spending from savings could be pushing the cost of goods and services higher, White House economists conceded this week in their annual “Economic Report of the President,” which includes summaries of the past year’s developments in the economy.“If the drawdown of excess savings, together with current income, boosted aggregate demand, it could have contributed to high inflation in 2021 and 2022,” the report says.Some liberal economists contend consumer demand is currently playing little if any role in price growth — placing the blame on supply challenges or on companies taking advantage of their market power and the economic moment to extract higher prices from consumers.High prices “are not being driven by excess demand, but are actually being driven by things like a supply chain crisis or war in Ukraine or corporate profiteering,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist for the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal policy organization in Washington.Other economists, though, say Mr. Biden and Congress could help the Fed’s inflation-fighting efforts by doing even more to reduce consumer demand and cool growth, either by raising taxes or reducing spending.Mr. Biden proposed a budget this month that would cut projected budget deficits by $3 trillion over the next decade, largely by raising taxes on high earners and corporations. Republicans refuse to raise taxes but are pushing for immediate cuts in government spending on health care, antipoverty measures and more, though they have not released a formal budget proposal yet. The Republican-controlled House voted this year to repeal some tax increases Mr. Biden signed into law last year, a move that could add modestly to inflation.Republican lawmakers have pushed Mr. Powell on whether he would welcome more congressional efforts to reduce the deficit and help bring inflation down. Mr. Powell rebuffed them.“We take fiscal policy as it comes to our front door, stick it in our model along with a million other things,” he said on Wednesday. “And we have responsibility for price stability. The Federal Reserve has the responsibility for that, and nothing is going to change that.” More

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    Powell and Yellen Suggest Need to Review Regulations After Bank Failures

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    Proposals for more scrutiny of the financial sector are meeting resistance from industry and Congress.WASHINGTON — Two of the nation’s top economic policymakers on Wednesday said they were focused on determining how the failure of Silicon Valley Bank had happened and suggested changes to federal regulation and oversight might be needed to prevent future runs on American banks.The discussion of stricter oversight by Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen came as lawmakers, the financial industry and investors are working to figure out why Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed and as policymakers try to ensure other firms don’t suffer the same fate.At a news conference following the Fed’s announcement that it would raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point, Mr. Powell said he was focused on the question of what had gone wrong at Silicon Valley Bank, which was overseen by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.The Fed has initiated an internal review into the supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, with the central bank’s vice chair for supervision, Michael S. Barr, leading the probe. Asked at the news conference whether he would support an independent examination — one not conducted by the Fed — Mr. Powell said he would welcome more scrutiny.“There’s 100 percent certainty that there will be outside investigations,” he said.Mr. Powell criticized bank executives, who he said had “failed badly,” but also conceded that Fed supervisors had not been effective at preventing the bank from sliding into insolvency. He said he expected the central bank’s own report to outline concrete steps to avoid a repeat of the crisis.“Clearly we do need to strengthen supervision and regulation,” Mr. Powell said. “And I assume that there’ll be recommendations coming out of the report, and I plan on supporting them and supporting their implementation.”Ms. Yellen echoed his comments at a Senate hearing on Wednesday afternoon, saying policymakers needed to take a hard look at the troubles plaguing the banking industry, including what led to the downfalls of Silicon Valley Bank, on March 10, and Signature Bank, which was seized by regulators on March 12.“I absolutely think that it’s appropriate to conduct a very thorough review of what factors were responsible for the failure of these banks,” she said. “Certainly we should be reconsidering what we need to shore up regulation to prevent this.”Ms. Yellen said she supports legislation that would penalize executives whose actions lead to bank failures and restore rules that were rolled back during the Trump administration that gave the Financial Stability Oversight Council more power to scrutinize nonbank financial institutions.Economic policymakers are trying to figure out why Silicon Valley Bank failed and to ensure other firms don’t suffer the same fate.Ulysses Ortega for The New York TimesMs. Yellen also said that because bank runs “may more readily happen now,” it might make sense to update stress test models and bank liquidity requirements with new assumptions about how quickly deposits could flee. Mr. Powell also addressed the speed of the outflows of funds from Silicon Valley Bank, which was hastened by social media and the ease of moving money with smartphones, suggesting that new rules are needed to keep up with advances in technology.For the time being, Ms. Yellen said she was focused on using existing tools to restore confidence in the banking system.The Biden administration likely has little choice because of mounting resistance to new financial regulations within Congress and the banking industry. That opposition was clear on Wednesday as lawmakers and executives gathered at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington.Although there was widespread support for uncovering the roots of the current turmoil, influential lawmakers expressed a desire for caution in considering new curbs on the financial sector.“I think it’s too early to know whether or not new legislation will be necessary,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services committee.Mr. McHenry warned that proposed increases to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation deposit insurance limit could lead to unintended consequences and “moral hazard,” and said that “firms need to be able to fail.”“If you have a hammer, the world looks like a nail,” Mr. McHenry said of the desire to impose more onerous regulations on banks.The banking industry, which has welcomed the government’s support of the sector this month, also urged lawmakers not to respond with more scrutiny.“We should not rush to make changes when we still do not fully know what happened and why,” Rob Nichols, chief executive of the American Bankers Association, said on Wednesday.But Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank this month had shaken the nation’s trust in the banking system. He vowed to hold the executives of those banks accountable and press regulators to review what went wrong.Mr. Brown also called for legislation to “strengthen guardrails” and urged the bank lobbyists not to stand in the way.Representative Patrick T. McHenry warned that proposed increases to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $250,000 deposit insurance limit could have unintended consequences.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesPresident Biden has decried rollbacks in financial regulation passed by Republicans and Democrats under his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump. But he has thus far offered only a small set of concrete proposals for new legislation or executive action to stabilize the financial system in its current turmoil.Last week, Mr. Biden called for Congress to strengthen regulators’ ability to penalize executives of failed banks. His proposals would allow regulators to claw back compensation that executives of medium-sized banks received before their institutions went under, broadening a penalty that currently applies only to executives of large banks. They also would lower the legal threshold that regulators need to clear in order to ban those executives from working in other parts of the financial system.Administration officials are privately debating what else, if anything, Mr. Biden might ask Congress to do — or announce his administration will do unilaterally — to shore up the banking system.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, repeatedly dodged questions from reporters this week about any new proposals Mr. Biden was considering. “We don’t want to let Congress off the hook,” she said on Tuesday. “We want Congress to continue to — to certainly — to take action. And so, we’re going to call on them to do just that.”Mr. Biden has given just one speech on bank regulation since his administration joined the Fed in announcing a rescue plan for Silicon Valley Bank depositors earlier this month. He last addressed the issue on March 17, in a brief exchange with reporters before boarding Marine One at the White House.In that exchange, Mr. Biden was asked: “Are you confident the bank crisis has calmed down?”He replied: “Yes.”Lawmakers pressed Ms. Yellen on whether the administration supported proposals that some members of Congress have offered to make bank customers, whose deposits are only federally guaranteed up to $250,000, feel more confident that their money is safe.Ms. Yellen demurred when asked about proposals to raise the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s cap on deposit insurance. Referring to recent moves to protect bank depositors, Ms. Yellen said during a speech at the A.B.A. gathering on Tuesday that “similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs that pose the risk of contagion.”The Biden administration appears to have limited legal authority to unilaterally lift the deposit insurance cap, but financial sector analysts have speculated that the Treasury Department is studying whether it could utilize its Exchange Stabilization Fund, a pot of more than $200 billion of emergency money, to back bank deposits.“All she needs is approval from the president to tap into that basket,” Henrietta Treyz, director of economic policy research at Veda Partners, said of Ms. Yellen. “There are no other alternatives; there’s no chance of a bill passing Congress.”Ms. Yellen said on Wednesday that she was not considering such a move but rather would make case-by-case determinations of whether any banks facing runs pose a “systemic risk” to the economy.“I have not considered or discussed anything to do with blanket insurance or guarantees of all deposits,” Ms. Yellen said, adding that any changes to the deposit insurance limit would require legislation from Congress.Invoking the systemic-risk exception again would require approval from both the Fed and the F.D.I.C. At least one policymaker at the F.D.I.C. is skeptical that the exception should be applied to smaller banks, a person familiar with the situation said, which suggests that achieving consensus on such a move may not be a foregone conclusion.Uncertainty over any government plans to help further backstop banks loom large for the number of regional banks that have seen massive outflows of deposits and are exploring various ways to shore up their balance sheets. Both buyers and sellers are wary of striking a deal without full clarity on concessions the government might offer, two people familiar with the negotiations said.These include First Republic and Pacific Western Bank, which earlier Wednesday said, after tapping billions from an investment firm and the Federal Reserve, it was holding off on raising new capital in part because of depressed shares. Pacific Western has seen deposits fall 20 percent since the start of the year, while First Republic has lost nearly half.It is also unclear what concessions the F.D.I.C will offer as part of its efforts to sell the former Silicon Valley Bank. At least one bank, North Carolina-based First Citizens, has put forward an offer to buy that business, a person briefed on the matter said. The agency is now in the process of soliciting offers for various parts of SVB’s business including Silicon Valley Private Bank, an asset management firm, to discern whether it is more lucrative to sell the bank in pieces or as a whole.“We’ll need to wait and see what the bids are and what the least cost is to the deposit insurance fund,” said Julianne Breitbeil, a spokeswoman for the F.D.I.C, regarding any potential concessions the government plans to offer.The agency expects to issue an update on the sale process this weekend, Ms. Breitbeil said. More

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    Fed Meeting Holds High Stakes for Biden

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    The president is counting on the central bank to strike the right balance on jobs and inflation — and to prevent a spiraling financial crisis.WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday on whether to raise rates at a precarious moment carries risks not just for the central bank, but also for President Biden.Mr. Biden was already relying on the Fed to maintain a delicate balance with its interest rate decisions, simultaneously taming rapid price growth while avoiding plunging the economy into recession. Now, he also needs the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, and his colleagues to avert a misstep that could hasten a full-blown financial crisis.Economists and investors are watching Wednesday’s decision closely, after the Fed and the administration intervened this month to shore up a suddenly shaky regional banking system following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. So are administration officials, who publicly express support for Mr. Powell but, in some cases, have privately clashed with Fed officials over bank regulation and supervision in the midst of their joint financial rescue efforts.Forecasters generally expect Fed officials to continue their monthslong march of rate increases, in an effort to cool an inflation rate that is still far too hot for the Fed’s liking. But they expect policymakers to raise rates by only a quarter of a percentage point, to just above 4.75 percent — a smaller move than markets were pricing in before the bank troubles began.Some economists and former Fed officials have urged Mr. Powell and his colleagues to continue raising rates unabated, in order to project confidence in the system. Others have called on the Fed to pause its efforts, at least temporarily, to avoid dealing further losses to financial institutions holding large amounts of government bonds and other assets that have lost value amid the rapid rate increases of the past year.“Under the currently unsettled circumstances, the stakes are high,” Hung Tran, a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund who is now at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, wrote in a blog post this week.“Disappointing market expectations could usher in additional sell-offs in financial markets, especially of bank shares and bonds, possibly requiring more bailouts,” he wrote. “On the other hand, the Fed needs also to communicate its intention to bring inflation back to its target in the medium term — a difficult but not impossible thing to do.”Economists and investors are watching the Fed’s decision closely.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Biden has for nearly a year professed his belief that the Fed could engineer a so-called soft landing as it raises interest rates, slowing the pace of job creation and bringing down inflation but not pushing the economy into recession. That would complete what the president frequently calls a transition to “steady and more stable growth.”It would also help Mr. Biden as he gears up for a widely expected announcement that he will seek re-election: History suggests that the president would be buoyed by an economy with low unemployment and historically normal levels of inflation in 2024..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Through the beginning of the year, data suggested a soft landing could be in the works. But in recent months, price growth has picked up again. The economy continues to create jobs at a much faster pace than Mr. Biden said last year would be consistent with more stable growth. Fed officials were eyeing a more aggressive inflation-fighting stance before the banking crisis hit.Mr. Powell suggested in congressional testimony this month that the Fed could raise rates by as much as half a percentage point in the two-day meeting that ends on Wednesday. Days later, Silicon Valley Bank failed, followed by Signature Bank. The Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced emergency measures to ensure that the banks’ depositors would have access to all their money, and that other regional banks could borrow from the Fed to prevent the rapid flight of deposits that had doomed Silicon Valley Bank.Mr. Biden will need further cooperation from Fed officials if more bank failures, or other events, threaten a full-scale financial crisis. Republicans control the House and appear unwilling to sign on for a potentially large government rescue of the financial system, like the bipartisan bank bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis.“It’s especially important when you can’t count on Congress,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. “We’re going to see the only game in town when it comes to financial stability is the White House and the Fed.”Administration officials have publicly lauded Mr. Powell since the Silicon Valley Bank failure. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week that there was no risk to Mr. Powell’s position as Fed chair from his handling of financial regulation.“The president has confidence in Jerome Powell,” she said.Ms. Jean-Pierre also reiterated the administration’s longstanding refusal to comment on Fed interest rate decisions. “They are independent,” she said, adding: “And they are going to make their decision — their monetary policy decision, as it relates to the interest rate, as it relates to dealing with inflation, which are clearly both connected. But I’m just not going to — we’re not going to comment on that from here.”There is wide debate on what interest rate announcement Mr. Biden should be hoping to hear on Wednesday afternoon.Some economists and commentators have pushed the Fed to hold off on raising rates entirely, contending that another increase risks further rattling the banking system — and consumers’ confidence in it.Liberal senators like Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and progressive groups in Washington have urged the same for months but for a far different reason. They argue that continued rate increases could slam the brakes on economic growth and throw millions of Americans out of work, and they say the real drivers of inflation are corporate profiteering and snarled supply chains, which will not be tamed by higher borrowing costs.“I don’t think the Fed should be touching interest rate hikes with a 15-foot pole,” said Rakeen Mabud, the chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal policy group in Washington.“Tanking our labor market is not the way to a healthy economy, is not the way to stable prices,” Ms. Mabud said. “We have an additional imperative this month, which is that aggressive interest rate hikes are exactly what have created some of the instability that we’re seeing” in the financial system.Other economists, including some Democrats, have urged the Fed to raise rates even more swiftly to beat back inflation as soon as possible.“The whole reason we have independent central banks is so they think about things on a longer time horizon than the typical White House is able to,” Mr. Furman said. “So I think the Fed, insofar as it did anything to hurt Biden, it was that it raised rates too slowly.” 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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    How Washington Decided to Rescue Silicon Valley Bank

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    Officials were initially unsure about the need for the measures they eventually announced to shore up the financial system, but changed their minds quickly.WASHINGTON — On Friday afternoon, the deputy Treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, met with Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Company, at Mr. Dimon’s office in New York.The Biden administration and the Federal Reserve were considering what would be the most aggressive emergency intervention in the banking system since the 2008 financial crisis, and the question the two men debated was at the heart of that decision.Could the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the mega start-up lender that had just collapsed, spread to other banks and create a systemic risk to the financial system?“There’s potential,” Mr. Dimon said, according to people familiar with the conversation.Mr. Adeyemo was one of many administration officials who entered last weekend unsure of whether the federal government needed to explicitly rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors before markets opened on Monday morning.In the White House and the Treasury, some officials initially saw the bank’s swift plunge to insolvency as unlikely to spark an economic crisis — particularly if the government could facilitate a sale of the bank to another financial institution.They quickly changed their minds after signs of nascent bank runs across the country — and direct appeals from small businesses and lawmakers from both parties — convinced them the bank’s problems could imperil the entire financial system, not just rich investors in Silicon Valley.On Friday morning, aides met with President Biden in the Oval Office, where they warned that the panic engulfing Silicon Valley Bank could spread to other financial institutions, according to a White House official. Mr. Biden told them to keep him updated on developments.By Friday afternoon, before financial markets had even closed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had stepped in and shut down the bank.Still, the kind of rescue that the United States ultimately engineered would not materialize publicly until Sunday, after intense deliberations across the government.This account is based on interviews with current and former officials in the White House, Treasury and the Fed; financial services executives; members of Congress; and others. All were involved or close to the discussions that dominated Washington over a frenzied process that began Thursday evening and ended 72 hours later with an extraordinary announcement timed to beat the opening of financial markets in Asia.The episode was a test for the president — who risked criticism from the left and the right by greenlighting what critics called a bailout for banks. It also confronted Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen with the prospect of a banking crisis at a moment when she had become more optimistic that a recession could be avoided. And it was the starkest demonstration to date of the impact that the Fed’s aggressive interest rate increases were having on the economy.Wally Adeyemo, deputy Treasury secretary, was initially unsure whether the government would need to intervene to rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors. Andrew Harnik/Associated PressSilicon Valley Bank failed because it had put a large share of customer deposits into long-dated Treasury bonds and mortgage bonds that promised modest, steady returns when interest rates were low. As inflation jumped and the Fed lifted interest rates from near zero to above 4.5 percent to fight it over the last year, the value of those assets eroded. The bank essentially ran out of money to make good on what it owed to its depositors.By Thursday, concern was growing at the Federal Reserve. The bank had turned to the Fed to borrow money through the central bank’s “discount window” that day, but it soon became clear that was not going to be enough to forestall a collapse.Officials including Jerome H. Powell, chairman of the Fed, and Michael S. Barr, its vice chair for supervision, worked through Thursday night and into Friday morning to try to find a solution to the bank’s unraveling. By Friday, Fed officials feared the bank’s failure could pose sweeping risks to the financial system.Compounding the worry: The prospects of arranging a quick sale to another bank in order to keep depositors whole dimmed through the weekend. A range of firms nibbled around the idea of purchasing it — including some of the largest and most systemically important.One large regional bank, PNC, tiptoed toward making an acceptable offer. But that deal fell through as the bank scrambled to scrub Silicon Valley Bank’s books and failed to get enough assurances from the government that it would be protected from risks, according to a person briefed on the matter.A dramatic government intervention seemed unlikely on Thursday evening, when Peter Orszag, former President Barack Obama’s first budget director and now chief executive of financial advisory at the bank Lazard, hosted a previously scheduled dinner at the bank’s offices in New York City’s Rockefeller Center..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Among those in attendance were Mr. Adeyemo and a pair of influential senators: Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia. Both were sponsors of a 2018 law that rolled back regulation on smaller banks that critics now say left Silicon Valley Bank vulnerable.Blair Effron, a large Democratic donor who had just been hired by Silicon Valley Bank to advise it on its liquidity crunch, was also there. Earlier that day, the bank had attempted to raise money to stave off collapse with the help of Goldman Sachs — an effort that, by Thursday evening, had clearly failed.The Federal Reserve ultimately opened a lending program to help keep money flowing through the banking system.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Effron and Mr. Adeyemo spoke as it became evident that Silicon Valley Bank was running out of options and that a sale — or some bigger intervention — might be necessary. Jeffrey Zients, Mr. Biden’s new chief of staff, and Lael Brainard, the new director of his National Economic Council, were also being pelted by warnings about the bank’s threat to the economy. As Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors raced to withdraw their money on Thursday, sending its stock into free fall, both Ms. Brainard and Mr. Zients began receiving a flurry of calls and texts from worried leaders in the start-up community that the bank heavily served.Ms. Brainard, who had experienced financial crises in other countries while serving in Mr. Obama’s Treasury Department and as a Federal Reserve Board member, had begun to worry about a new crisis emanating from SVB’s failure. She and Mr. Zients raised that possibility with Mr. Biden when they briefed him in the Oval Office on Friday morning.Other officials across the administration were more skeptical, worrying that the lobbying blitz Ms. Brainard and others were receiving was purely a sign of wealthy investors trying to force the government to backstop their losses. And there were concerns that any kind of government action could be seen as bailing out a bank that had mismanaged its risk, potentially encouraging risky behavior by other banks in the future.Ms. Brainard started fielding anxious calls again on Saturday morning and did not stop until late in the evening. She and Mr. Zients briefed Mr. Biden that afternoon — virtually this time, because the president was spending the weekend in his home state of Delaware.Mr. Biden also spoke Saturday with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who was pushing aggressively for government intervention in fear that a wide range of companies in his state would otherwise not be able to pay employees or other operational costs on Monday morning.Concerns mounted that day as regulators reviewed data that showed deposit outflows increasing at regional banks nationwide — a likely sign of systemic risk. They began pursuing two possible sets of policy actions, ideally a buyer for the bank. Without that option, they would need to seek a “systemic risk exception” to allow the F.D.I.C. to insure all of the bank’s deposits. To calm jittery investors, they surmised that a Fed lending facility would also be needed to buttress regional banks more broadly.“Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them,” President Biden said on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMs. Yellen on Saturday convened top officials — Mr. Powell, Mr. Barr and Martin J. Gruenberg, the chairman of the F.D.I.C.’s board of directors — to figure out what to do. The Treasury secretary was fielding back-to-back calls on Zoom from officials and executives and at one point described what she was hearing about the banking sector as hair-raising.F.D.I.C. officials initially conveyed reservations about their authority to back deposits that were not insured, raising concerns among those who were briefed by the F.D.I.C. that a rescue could come too late.By Saturday night, anxiety that the Biden administration was dragging its feet was bubbling over among California lawmakers.At the glitzy Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, cornered Steve Ricchetti, a top White House aide and close adviser to the president, and urged Mr. Biden and his team to be decisive. He warned that many of Mr. Biden’s major achievements would be washed away if the banking system melted down.“I said, Steve, this is a massive issue not just for Silicon Valley, but for regional banks around America,” Mr. Khanna said, adding that Mr. Ricchetti replied: “I get it.”Privately, it was becoming clear to Mr. Biden’s economic team that banking customers were getting spooked. On Saturday evening, officials from the Treasury, the White House and the Fed tentatively agreed to two bold moves they finalized and announced late on Sunday afternoon: The government would ensure that all depositors would be repaid in full, and the Fed would offer a program providing attractive loans to other financial institutions in hopes of avoid a cascading series of bank failures.But administration officials wanted to ensure the rescue had limits. The focus, according to a person familiar with the conversation, was ensuring that businesses around the country would be able to pay their employees on Monday and that no taxpayer money would be used by tapping the F.D.I.C.’s Deposit Insurance Fund.It was a priority that the rescue not be viewed as a bailout, which had become a toxic word in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The depositors would be protected, but the bank’s management and its investors would not.By Sunday morning, regulators were putting the finishing touches on the rescue package and preparing to brief Congress. Ms. Yellen, in consultation with the president, approved the “systemic risk exception” that would protect all of the bank’s deposits. The bipartisan members of the Federal Reserve and the F.D.I.C. voted unanimously to approve the decision.That evening, they announced a plan to make sure all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and another large failed financial institution, Signature Bank, were repaid in full. The Fed also said it would offer banks loans against their Treasury and many other asset holdings, whose values had eroded.“Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them,” Mr. Biden said during brief remarks at the White House.By Tuesday afternoon the intervention was showing signs of working. Regional bank stocks, which had fallen on Monday, had partially rebounded. The outflow of deposits from regional banks had slowed. And banks were pledging collateral at the Fed’s new loan program, which would put them in a position to use it if they decided that doing so was necessary.The financial system appeared to have stabilized, at least for the moment. More

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    SVB Collapse Upsets Expectations for Federal Reserve’s Rate Decision

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    Listen to This ArticleThe Federal Reserve’s hotly anticipated March 22 interest rate decision is just a week and a half away, and the drama that swept the banking and financial sector over the weekend is drastically shaking up expectations for what the central bank will deliver.The Fed had been raising interest rates rapidly to try to contain the most painful burst of inflation since the 1980s, lifting them to above 4.5 percent from near zero a year ago. Concern about rapid inflation prompted the central bank to make four consecutive 0.75-point increases last year before slowing to a half point in December and a quarter point in February.Before this weekend, investors believed there was a substantial chance that the Fed would make a half-point increase at its meeting next week. That step up was seen as an option because job growth and consumer spending have proved surprisingly resilient to higher rates — prompting Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, to signal just last week that the Fed would consider a bigger move.But investors and economists no longer see that as a likely possibility.Three notable banks have failed in the past week alone as Fed interest rate increases ricochet through the technology sector and cryptocurrency markets and upend even usually staid bank business models.Regulators unveiled a sweeping intervention on Sunday evening to try to prevent panic from coursing across the broader financial system, with the Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Fed saying depositors at the failed banks will be paid back in full. The Fed announced an emergency lending program to help funnel cash to banks facing steep losses on their holdings because of the change in interest rates.The Downfall of Silicon Valley BankOne of the most prominent lenders in the world of technology start-ups collapsed on March 10, forcing the U.S. government to step in.A Rapid Fall: The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the biggest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, was caused by a run on the bank. But will the turmoil prove to be fleeting — or turn into a true crisis?The Fallout: The bank’s implosion rattled a start-up industry already on edge, and some of the worst casualties of the collapse were companies developing solutions for the climate crisis.Signature Bank: The New York financial institution closed its doors abruptly after regulators said it could threaten the entire financial system. To some extent, it is a victim of the panic around Silicon Valley Bank.The Fed’s Next Move: The Federal Reserve has been rapidly raising interest rates to fight inflation, but making big moves could be trickier after Silicon Valley Bank’s blowup.The tumult — and the risks that it exposed — could make the central bank more cautious as it pushes forward.Investors have abruptly downgraded how many interest rate moves they expect this year. After Mr. Powell’s speech last week opened the door to a large rate change at the next meeting, investors had sharply marked up their 2023 forecasts, even penciling in a tiny chance that rates would rise above 6 percent this year. But after the wild weekend in finance, they see just a small move this month and expect the Fed to cut rates to just above 4.25 percent by the end of the year.Economists at J.P. Morgan said the situation bolstered the case for a smaller, quarter-point move this month.“I don’t hold that view with tons of confidence,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan, explaining that a move this month was conditional on the banking system’s functioning smoothly. “We’ll see if these backstops have been enough to quell concerns. If they are successful, I think the Fed wants to continue on the path to tightening policy.”Goldman Sachs economists no longer expect a rate move at all. While Goldman analysts still think the Fed will raise rates to above 5.25 percent this year, they wrote on Sunday evening that they “see considerable uncertainty” about the path.“I think the Fed is going to want to wait awhile to see how this plays out,” said William English, a former director of the monetary affairs division at the Fed who is now at Yale. He explained that tremors in the banking system could spook lenders, consumers and businesses — slowing the economy and meaning that the Fed had to do less to cool the economy and lower inflation.“If it were me, I’d be inclined to pause,” Mr. English said.Other economists went even further: Nomura, saying it was unclear whether the government’s relief program was enough to stop problems in the banking sector, is now calling for a quarter-point rate cut at the coming meeting.The Fed will receive fresh information on inflation on Tuesday, when the Consumer Price Index is released. That measure is likely to have climbed 6 percent over the year through February, economists in a Bloomberg forecast expected. That would be down slightly from 6.4 percent in a previous reading.But economists expected prices to climb 0.4 percent from January after food and fuel prices, which jump around a lot, are stripped out. That pace would be quick enough to suggest that inflation pressures were still unusually stubborn — which would typically argue for a forceful Fed response.The data could underline why this moment poses a major challenge for the Fed. The central bank is in charge of fostering stable inflation, which is why it has been raising interest rates to slow spending and business expansions, hoping to rein in growth and cool price increases.But it also charged with maintaining financial system stability, and higher interest rates can reveal weaknesses in the financial system — as the blowup of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday and the towering risks for the rest of the banking sector illustrated. That means those goals can come into conflict.Subadra Rajappa, head of U.S. rates strategy at Société Générale, said on Sunday afternoon that she thought the unfolding banking situation would be a caution against moving rates quickly and drastically — and she said instability in banking would make the Fed’s task “trickier,” forcing it to balance the two jobs.“On the one hand, they are going to have to raise rates: That’s the only tool they have at their disposal” to control inflation, she said. On the other, “it’s going to expose the frailty of the system.”Ms. Rajappa likened it to the old saying about the beach at low tide: “You’re going to see, when the tide runs out, who has been swimming naked.”Some saw the Fed’s new lending program — which will allow banks that are suffering in the high-rate environment to temporarily move to the Fed a chunk of the risk they are facing from higher interest rates — as a sort of insurance policy that could allow the central bank to continue raising rates without causing further ruptures.“The Fed has basically just written insurance on interest-rate risk for the whole banking system,” said Steven Kelly, senior research associate at Yale’s program on financial stability. “They’ve basically underwritten the banking system, and that gives them more room to tighten monetary policy.”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