zerohedge.com / by Tyler Durden / 03/21/2016 09:00
After last week’s ridiculous FOMC announcement which forced even such “party line” commentators as Steve Liesman to ask Yellen if the Fed has lost all credibility after its dots tumbled despite surging core inflation and a mandate low unemployment rate, one can be forgiven if all they laugh at the latest Fed “forecast.”
Still, it is a Fed forecast, even if one coming from a Fed permadove such as SF Fed’s Williams who told Market News International in an exclusive interview that “he will be advocating for another interest rate hike as early as the April meeting of the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee – or, failing that, at the June meeting – provided the economy continues to do as well as it has been.”
It is unclear just what he means by “as well as the economy has been doing” considering the Fed just slashed its rate hike expectations by 50% ostensibly on a weak U.S. economy, unless of course the Fed’s mandate has nothing to do with the US economy and everything to do with the US Dow Jones Industrial Avereage. For those confused, that was sarcasm.
More details from Market News, according to which Williams suggested there is no justification for long delaying further Fed rate hikes in the face of continued labor market improvement and “very encouraging” progress toward meeting the Fed’s 2% inflation target.
“All else equal, assuming everything else is basically the same and the data flow continues the way I hope and expect, then April or June would definitely be potential times to have an increase in interest rates,” he said.
Global economic and financial risks still remain, as the FOMC acknowledged in its March 16 statement, Williams said, but the U.S. economy has shown an ability so far to surmount those foreign headwinds. Were it not for those downside risks from abroad, he said the Fed should be raising rates even faster.
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