Timeline of Powell’s policy tilts and its implications

Now that the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has dialed in the rate cut for July in his testimony to the congress yesterday after raising the hopes in the June FOMC meeting, let’s look back at some of his policy pivots so far in his relatively short tenure.

1. Powell got off to an assured start taking off from where Yellen had left off with a rate hike in March 2018 and prepared the market for further gradual tightening.
2. Federal Reserve followed the March rate hike with another hike in June.
3. Powell turned up at Jackson Hole on the 26th of August when a lot of murmurs about Fed getting too aggressive on tightening were going around. Powell’s speech gave the perfect headline to the hawks who expected no real change to the outlook of two more rate hikes for the year. But beyond the headlines, he chewed on the policy dilemma facing the Fed in the wake of uncertainties coming from multiple corners - “guiding policy by the stars in practice. . . has been quite challenging of late because our best assessments of the location of the stars have been changing significantly”. In related news, the S&P 500 closed at a then new record high that day.
4. Come the September Fed meeting in 2018 and we got the fully priced in rate hike with hawkish message from Powell pretty much dialling in another hike in December too by upgrading growth outlook and sounding upbeat on labour market and wage growth as well. While doing that Fed also removed the word accommodative from its communication which Powell played down by arguing that it’s not a sign of policy change but that the word’s utility has passed. He added that Fed funds rate is still below the longer-run neutral rate of every single participant.
5. The first outsized tilt came in a public speech at Washington on October 3rd where he hinted at Fed’s openness to go past the neutral rate. “Interest rates are still accommodative, but we’re gradually moving to a place where they’ll be neutral”. “We may go past neutral. But we’re a long way from neutral at this point, probably”.
6. While Powell didn’t immediately track back from his famous long way from neutral rate comment, his fellow Fed members tried their best to play down that comment. Eventually Powell used his speech at the Economic Club of New York on the 28th of November to backtrack when he said that while interest rates remain low by historical standards, they are closer to the neutral level.
7. But even after the backtracking Powell still insisted that the Balance Sheet run off was on autopilot in the FOMC press conference on 19th December.
8. Come the first week of January Powell did a complete turnaround on both rates and balance sheet run off: “We’re listening carefully with – sensitivity to the message that the markets are sending and we’ll be taking those downside risks into account as we make policy going forward.” What is particularly remarkable was that this comment came after a bumper NFP data was published - The headline number was a whopping 301k (vs 161k consensus), past two months revisions +58k, Average hourly earnings ticked up to 0.4% and 3.2% annualized and that brought more participation (63.1% - best since 2014) in the labour market resulting in a higher unemployment rate at 3.9%.
9. The message since then was consistent with listening to the markets comment except that the markets decided to test Fed’s commitment by pricing in a rate cut for July. Powell duly obliged by not only leaving the door open for the priced in rate cut (80%) then, but by even opening up the possibility of a 50 bps cut in his FOMC press conference on 19th June.
10. The stronger headline June NFP print put paid to the outside possibility of 50 bps cut but Powell used his testimony to the congress yesterday (July 10) to reinforce the 25 bps rate cut coming up in July as markets shed some accumulated nerves about Fed walking back on the July rate cut completely on the back of strong NFP.

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