Central bankers are engaged in the most sweeping rethink of their role in decades, spurred by the success of tight collaboration with governments in countering the pandemic crisis and a new political reality of increased demands on monetary policy makers.
A word of warning for all those bond traders banking on a Federal Reserve rate hike as soon as next year: Since 2008, markets have underestimated how patient officials can be in lifting borrowing costs from zero.
Wall Street’s most bullish economic forecasts hang on a simple prediction: everybody will flood back soon to their local gyms, bars and yoga studios as if the pandemic was in the past.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. job market remains a long way from a full recovery and called on both lawmakers and the private sector to support workers.
Jerome Powell doesn’t want to talk about scaling back massive Federal Reserve asset purchases -- at least not yet -- but it’s only a question of time before the discussion resumes and that might not be a bad thing.
Declaring that the battle against Covid-19 is not over, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pledged to keep the monetary spigots wide open to aid the pandemic-hit economy, brushing aside concerns the super-easy stance will spawn a stock market bubble and too-high inflation.
As President-elect Joe Biden looks to pull the economy out of the wreckage caused by the pandemic and onto a sustained path of recovery, his team faces one increasingly big problem: a mountain of corporate debt.
As Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen is almost certain to pursue tighter coordination with the U.S. Federal Reserve next year -- repairing recent frictions -- though observers say she will be careful to avoid any specific move that could trigger a wave of Republican protests.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell opened the door to a possible shift in the central bank’s bond purchases in coming months, saying that more fiscal and monetary support are needed as rising Covid-19 infections cloud the outlook for the economic recovery.