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Economist Susan M. Collins Will Lead Boston Fed

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The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has selected Susan M. Collins, a University of Michigan economist and administrator, as its new president — making her the first Black woman to lead a regional reserve bank in the Fed system’s 108-year history.Ms. Collins, who is a provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the university, will be one of 12 regional reserve bank presidents within the Fed system and will vote on monetary policy in 2022.Ms. Collins identifies as Jamaican-American, and she will add to the diversity of the Fed at a moment when it is moving away from its heavily white and male makeup in the past.Lisa Cook, a Michigan State University economist who is also a Black woman, has been nominated as a Fed governor but has yet to be confirmed. Raphael Bostic, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta president, was the first Black person ever to lead a reserve bank. Ms. Collins will start July 1, the Boston Fed said in its release, which will plunge her into the policy discussion at a challenging moment. Officials are trying to combat rapid price increases without choking off a robust economic rebound from the pandemic. Joblessness has fallen swiftly and wages are rising, though not quite enough to overcome the burst of inflation as supply chain issues spur shortages.“I look forward to helping the Bank and System pursue the Fed’s dual mandate from Congress — achieving price stability and maximum employment,” Ms. Collins said in the Boston Fed’s prepared release.Four regional central banks rotate in and out of rotating voting positions each year, while the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and members of the seven-seat Board of Governors in Washington hold a constant vote on monetary policy.The Fed is expected to raise interest rates, its main policy tool, several times this year to slow borrowing and spending, cooling off demand.Ms. Collins has had a wide-ranging economic career, including as a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund and as a staff member at the Council of Economic Advisers during the George H.W. Bush administration. Much of her research has focused on international economics.But she has at times spoken about monetary policy. In a 2015 article in The Detroit Free Press, she noted that it was difficult to be both reactive to incoming economic data and completely predictable. Locking in a preset pace of rate increases, she said, could set the market up for tumult if conditions changed.“The Fed wants to avoid surprising the market,” she said in the article.In a 2019 interview with Yahoo News, Ms. Collins said that the Fed should reassess how it was approaching the economy at a time when the link between unemployment and inflation was not as clear as expected. “The Fed is not in the business of making dramatic changes” to how it operates outside of crises, Ms. Collins said, but she noted that the Fed could in the future think about raising its inflation target above 2 percent. “Some of us think that being a little bit bolder there would be helpful,” she said. That could be relevant now, at a time when the Fed is trying to set policy against a virus-stricken and uncertain backdrop. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has emphasized that the central bank will be “humble” and “nimble.”Ms. Collins was selected by directors on the Boston Fed’s board and approved by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington. Ms. Collins will replace Eric S. Rosengren, who retired as the Boston Fed’s president last year following a trading scandal, citing health concerns.Ms. Collins has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More

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    Retail Sales Rose in November as Holiday Shopping Began

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    Retail sales rose for the fourth straight month in November, as consumers in the United States continued to spend even as they faced fast rising prices and an upswing in coronavirus infections.The 0.3 percent increase in sales last month reported by the Commerce Department was a slowdown from the month before — something that analysts said likely reflected a shift in the start of the holiday shopping season to October. Sales growth in October was revised slightly higher on Wednesday to 1.8 percent.Consumers, motivated by news of product shortages and fast rising prices, began their holiday shopping well before the Thanksgiving holiday, which is seen as the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.“We saw consumers thinking of inflation and supply chains being chocked, so the ultimate pantry loading happened in October,” Kathy Gramling, a consumer industry markets consultant for EY.As overall sales rose, spending — the key drivers of U.S. economic activity — at grocery stores and liquor stores, gas stations, clothing retailers and home improvement stores increased. Sales declined in several categories however: Spending at electronics and appliances stores fell 4.6 percent last month, while sales at car dealers and general merchandise stores, such as department stores, were down as well. Health and personal care stores, such as pharmacies, also saw a decrease of 0.6 percent.Ms. Gramling said retailers were likely to face logistical issues in January, when consumers come back to stores with returns from the holiday season.The latest measure of sales — the key driver of economic activity in the United States — comes as consumers are grappling with high inflation and a predicted surge in coronavirus infections. The sales data for November does not reflect how shoppers might have reacted to the emergence of the Omicron variant, which started to make headlines during the Thanksgiving weekend.But for now, economists expect that sales will continue to rise in December.A reading on consumer sentiment, measured by a University of Michigan survey on how Americans view the general state of the economy, increased in December after falling to its lowest level in a decade in early November. Those surveyed pointed to inflation as the most serious problem the country faces, according to preliminary results published on Friday.Also on Friday, the Labor Department reported that consumer prices had risen at their fastest pace in nearly 40 years. The Consumer Price Index was up 6.8 percent last month compared with a year earlier as demand for products remained strong and the virus continued to disrupt manufacturing and transportation.U.S. consumers were not slowed by surging coronavirus cases in November, when more than 30 states saw sustained increases in infections and hospitalizations climbed in certain areas of the country. More

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    Inflation Surged Again in October, With P.C.E. Index Climbing 5 Percent

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    A key measure of inflation showed consumer prices rising at the fastest pace in three decades, as energy prices and demand for goods and services soared, posing a challenge to both the White House and the Federal Reserve.Prices climbed by 5 percent in the 12 months through October, according to Personal Consumption Expenditures price index data released Wednesday. That was the fastest pace of increase since 1990.The gauge was lifted by a 30.2 percent annual increase in the price of energy and a 4.8 percent increase in the price of food. Prices rose 0.6 percent from September to October, as supply chain disruptions continued to clamp down on the availability of certain products and components.Inflation is increasing at its fastest pace in three decades.Personal Consumption Expenditures index, percent change from a year prior

    The Federal Reserve wants inflation to average 2 percent annually over time.Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic AnalysisBy The New York TimesThe increases were in line with what analysts had expected, but the rise in the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge will only add pressure on the central bank to take quicker action to maintain stable prices.Price increases have shown few signs of fading, as some officials in the Biden administration and at the Fed argued they would earlier this year. The central bank is facing growing calls to hasten plans to end their stimulative bond-buying program and to begin to raise interest rates, a process that could risk slowing job gains and economic growth.While inflation has soured consumer sentiment and weighed on Mr. Biden’s approval ratings, those price increases have been spurred in part by a strong economic recovery. Separate data released by the Labor Department on Wednesday found that initial jobless claims dropped to their lowest point since 1969, falling by 71,000 to 199,000 last week.Mr. Biden hailed the drop in unemployment claims on Wednesday but conceded that the country was still far from a full recovery and that it had to address rising inflation.“We have more work to do before our economy is back to normal, including addressing prices increases that hurt Americans’ pocketbooks and undermine gains in wages and disposable income,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.In an attempt to drive down gas prices, the United States and five other world powers announced a coordinated effort on Tuesday to tap into their national oil stockpiles. Mr. Biden has ordered the Energy Department to release 50 million barrels of crude in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, lower than what traders had expected from the emergency stockpile, which is the biggest in the world with 620 million barrels.Consumers have grown increasingly concerned about the spike in prices. A survey from the University of Michigan released on Wednesday found that consumers expressed less optimism in November than at any other time in the past decade about prospects for their finances and the overall growth of the economy. The decline in consumer sentiment was a result of the rapid increase in inflation and the lack of federal policies that would address the damage to household budgets, according to the report. More

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    Inflation Drives Sharp Downturn in Consumer Sentiment

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    Americans have turned decidedly gloomy about their financial outlook, and inflation is the main cause of the anxiety, according to a survey released Friday.The University of Michigan reported that its survey of consumer sentiment fell to its lowest level in a decade in early November. It attributed the decline to “the growing belief among consumers that no effective policies have yet been developed to reduce the damage from surging inflation.”Hampered by supply chain disruptions and labor shortages in some industries, the economy has been straining under rising prices. The government this week reported the steepest inflation in 31 years, with a 6.2 percent increase in prices in October from a year earlier.In the Michigan survey, “rising prices for homes, vehicles and durables were reported more frequently than any other time in more than half a century.” But inflation is hardly limited to big-ticket purchases — food items like meat are getting more expensive, driving up the cost of preparing Thanksgiving meals.Many policymakers have assumed that higher inflation would be transitory, a result of the uneven reopening of the economy after widespread shutdowns because of the coronavirus pandemic.Investors, too, have shrugged off the threat of inflation, even though it can erode the value of financial assets. Bond yields, which move higher in times of inflation, remain low by historical standards. And the stock market is near record highs, despite the uptick in prices lately.But the Michigan survey is a sign that consumers are beginning to feel pinched. The survey reflected a downturn in assessments of both current conditions and economic prospects.“Consumers are angry about inflation,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago.“Inflation will get worse before it gets better,” Ms. Swonk said. “It could moderate by the spring of 2022, and it does affect how people feel about the economy.”But consumers in the United States continue to spend at robust levels, she said, and the odds look good for a robust holiday shopping season. More