Skip to content
Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

FED WILL HOLD POLICY STEADY, POWELL SAYS

The U.S. Federal Reserve will not tighten monetary policy, Fed chair Jerome Powell reiterated on 4 March at the Wall Street Journal Jobs Summit.
“We’re still a long way from our goals of maximum employment and inflation averaging 2 percent over time,” he said.
With the U.S. economy still about ten million jobs short of its pre-pandemic payroll, “it will take some time to get back to maximum employment,” he cautioned.
The Fed has held its overnight interbank rate near zero since March 2020 and has been buying about $120 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities to hold long-term interest rates near that level.
Powell offered no indication that the Fed will seek to stem the continuing rise in bond yields, which caused stocks to fall and bond yields to rise further on the day.
Asked about the rise in rates, Powell said it was “something notable and had caught my attention” but offered no policy responses.
“I would be concerned about disorderly conditions in markets or a persistent tightening in financial conditions that threatens the achievement of our goals,” he added.
Treasury bond yields are rising on expectations of an economic recovery that could spark inflation, driving bond values down and yields up even more.
“The market was looking for some reassurance” from Powell about rates “and didn’t get it,” Krishna Guha, chief of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, said to the Wall Street Journal.
The Fed does not “appear particularly concerned about the current level of yields, which is significantly higher than it was two weeks ago,” he noted.
TREND FORECAST: Should interest rates move higher, the housing boom will reverse and so, too, will equity markets… both of which will trend from boom to bust. Tracking the recent, modest increase, fixed rates for 30-year mortgages rose past 3 percent for the first time since July, lender Freddie Mac reported. The hike is reducing the number of mortgage applications now coming to lenders, the WSJ said.

Comments are closed.