Mike CosgroveFederal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and other Fed leaders seem to believe that their policy of increasing short-term interest rates by 525 basis points is responsible for the progress to date on slowing inflation. They may be the only ones.
The September “Blue Chip Economic Indicators,” a monthly survey of top business economists, placed the importance of Fed tightening in perspective, to date, with the following question: “What do you think has been the major factor behind the decline in U.S. inflation over the past year?”
Among those responding, 58% said “Mending supply chains.” Another 34% said “Falling energy prices.” But only 8% responded “Tighter monetary policy.”
There are usually around 50 economists in the Blue Chip survey, so only 3 or 4 out of that group thought that jacking up the funds rate by 525 bps since March 2022 along with quantitative tightening has been the major factor behind the inflation slowdown over the past year.
CPI inflation slowed from 9% year-over-year in June 2022 to a recent 3.7% y/y increase. The major factor in that decline was improvement in supply chains, according to those taking part in the survey.
In a November 30, 2022 speech, Fed Chair Powell said: “For starters, we need to raise interest rates to a level that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2%.” To date, economists say that Fed policy has been of limited importance in slowing inflation.
The Fed’s tightening of monetary policy has its major effect on reducing inflation by slowing aggregate demand or the growth rate of the economy. Real economic growth in 2022 was 2.1%, which is roughly equivalent to the long-term growth of the U.S. economy. So, essentially, monetary policy had little effect on real growth last year.
According to September’s Blue Chip survey, inflation-adjusted economic growth is expected to be around 2.2% this year, which is about where long-term growth is. Again, sharply higher interest rates and quantitative tightening are expected to have little effect on economic growth.
Next year, however, growth is expected to slow to 1%, according to the Blue Chip consensus, which implies that sharply higher interest rates and QT will have their impact but on the 2024 economy.
That follows the expected pattern of monetary policy tightening. Fed leaders raised the federal funds rate by 425 bps in 2022. A year to 18 months later, 2024, that Fed tightening should slow economic activity and push inflation lower.
Ten of the Blue Chip members expect economic activity to average 0.3% next year, which is consistent with a mild 2024 recession during an election year. Other indicators such as inverted yield curves, which happens when short-term interest rates are pushed higher than long-term interest rates, also point to recession next year. And some think that since a recession did not occur this year, that the U.S. won’t have one.
The issue with that outlook is that the Biden administration’s fiscal policy of excess federal spending has acted to prop up both economic growth and inflation, delaying a recession until next year.
Federal spending in 2023 is roughly two percentage points higher than before 2020 as a proportion of GDP, which is why this year’s federal deficit is running about $600 billion higher than last year’s deficit.
In addition, Biden Administration policies have clogged up the supply chain and tamped down the labor force participation rate. Inflation may have been close to the Fed’s 2% target by year-end 2023 if not for Biden policies.
Those policies included limiting fossil fuel production in the U.S. by halting new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, onshore and offshore, in January 2021. That policy pushed up oil prices and therefore inflation throughout the transportation supply chain.
Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, in March 2021, gave cash to the vast majority of U.S. households, whether they were working or not. That held down the labor force participation rate, as many otherwise able workers stayed out of the workforce. Now, that excess cash is drying up and, as expected, the labor force participation rate is ticking higher.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocated capital to particular industries, putting the federal government in the business of trying to pick winners and losers. Everyone knows how that turns out – misallocation of capital and fraud, further slowing the ability of the U.S. economy to produce goods and services.
Biden policies kept economic growth elevated in 2023 to avoid a recession, which pushed the recession into 2024. If Mr. Biden is still in the race for president, he may have a difficult time with voters who have been beaten up with high inflation for three years followed by a 2024 recession.
Mike Cosgrove, principal at Econoclast, a Dallas-based capital markets firm, is an emeritus professor at the University of Dallas.
I & I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Many of the prominent “economists” push their political preferences under cover of Fed policy criticism. They’re also uninterested in talking about what the Fed is likely to do – they’d rather focus on “should”, and have gotten it wrong for over a year. Many readers don’t read closely and follow this pernicious skewing.
“Why Are Fed Leaders And Economists So Out Of Sync?”
Because they don’t live in the real world. They certainly don’t believe in the constitution as written by our founders or wouldn’t have “career politicians” feeding at the public trough at taxpayers expense!
” Another 34% said “Falling energy prices.”
Where are these lower energy prices to be found? Not only are transportation fuels more expensive now than at any time over the past 2 and one half years, but I would not be surprised to find, if I were to look, that there are a record number of general rate hearings around the country asking for very large rate increases. We have some staggering requests here in the northwest region.
No, no, no, no and no. Ugh! Federal spending has not forestalled a recession. All federal spending does is debase the currency and cause malinvestment. Moreover, our prosperity is being unnecessarily kneecapped by highly credentialed, bonehead “economists” working for the Fed. They constantly commit the same screw-up because they’ve all joined the cult of “inflation is caused by fast growth, so growth has to be slowed down by raising interest rates.” This is destructively wrong for at least 3 reasons, which are NOT difficult to grasp:
1. Economic growth is caused by investment in equipment, technology, manpower, etc. that work together in all sorts of complex, semi-miraculous ways to increase productivity–the amount of something a given unit of labor is able to produce in a given period of time–and increases in productivity DECREASE prices. The less it costs you to make something, the less you have to charge people for it to make a profit;
2. Interest rates are simply the cost of capital, and capital is a basic industrial input like labor and energy—something every business needs and uses. Nobody struggles to understand that increasing the cost of labor and energy drives inflation, but for some baffling reason their brains shut down when pondering the effect of an increase in the cost of capital. Yet the effect is no different. Referring back to bullet point 1, capital is the very thing businesses invest to increase their productivity, which in turn decreases the prices for which they’re able to offer their goods. And to further belabor the obvious, if you jack up the costs incurred by businesses, they pass that on to consumers to the maximum degree they’re able to get away with doing so. Hello inflation.
3. The relationship between inflation and interest rates isn’t that higher interest rates decrease inflation; it’s that inflation CAUSES higher interest rates. If a dollar I lend you this year will only be worth 93 cents next year, I’m going to insist you compensate me for that loss in purchasing power by paying me more interest.
Why do I have zero difficulty understanding these very elementary concepts when so many blue-blooded dullards with Ivy League degrees do not?!?!