The central bank is expected to announce a A three-quarter percentage point rate hike Wednesday afternoon for the fourth time in a row. But investors are hoping Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will suggest the central bank will soon “pivot” and slow the pace of its rate hikes.
Those dreams can be shattered.
“I don’t believe Powell is backing down,” he said Daniel DeMartino Booth, CEO and Chief Strategist at Quill Intelligence Wednesday to CNN’s Alison Kosik “Markets Now” program. “The onus is on him to stay on course.”
DiMartino Booth, who has worked at the Dallas Fed for nine years, said he thinks the Fed will continue to focus on fighting inflation, especially as the jobs market remains healthy.
The central bank is going to be vigilant about rising consumer prices. Rick Ryder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, agreed.
“A pivot could be aggressive. We still have high inflation and employment, it’s still solid,” Ryder told Kosic.
But Ryder said this could be the last rate hike of this magnitude. That’s because earlier rate hikes are already having an impact on parts of the economy: “You’re seeing it in housing, and soon you’ll see it in autos and other interest rate-sensitive sectors.”
DeMartino Booth is even more concerned about the impact of rate hikes.
“The central bank certainly has an impact on consumption,” he said, “and a recession is a foregone conclusion.”
To make matters worse, he said, “It may take a long time to recover from this unusually large scale. [rate] gait cycle.”
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