Daily Briefing: When Will the Fed Figure Out Inflation?

The Federal Open Market Committee delivered exactly as expected Wednesday afternoon, announcing a second consecutive 75-basis-point interest-rate hike on a unanimous vote. U.S. equity indexes held solid gains, short-term U.S. Treasury yields dipped, and the dollar softened in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. An otherwise anodyne FOMC statement did note “recent indicators of spending and production have softened,” though it also described the labor market as “robust” and inflation as “elevated.” The Fed remains “highly attentive to inflation risks,” as attention turns to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference remarks. At the top of his prepared statement, Powell stressed the importance to long-term economic health of getting back to the Fed’s 2% inflation target. Andreas Steno Larsen welcomes Darius Dale, the founder of 42 Macro, to talk about inflation, the Fed, and the “rolling process” that is recession. We also hear a clip from Darius’s Fed Week conversation with Steven Van Metre and Jeffrey Snider about “getting back to neutral” when it comes to interest rates. You can watch that full conversation, including Roger Hirst’s commentary, here: https://rvtv.io/3cI5JcG.