华盛顿——美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔周三暗示，美联储计划最早在11月宣布，它将开始撤回2010年经济危机后释放的特别支持冠状病毒18个月前瘫痪了经济。
鲍威尔表示，如果就业市场保持稳步改善，美联储可能会开始放缓每月购买债券的步伐。这些购买旨在降低长期贷款利率，以鼓励借贷和消费。
这位美联储主席在新闻发布会上表示:“我认为，如果经济继续大致按照预期发展，我们可以在11月份的下一次会议上轻松前进”。
与此同时，美联储决策委员会周三表示，预计将在明年某个时候开始上调基准利率——早于三个月前成员们的预期，这表明他们担心高通胀压力可能会持续。然而，鲍威尔强调，只有在美联储结束债券购买后，才会加息，他表示，这一过程可能会持续到明年年中。
总体而言，美联储的计划反映出它相信经济已经从大流行性衰退中充分复苏，足以让它很快开始收回大流行爆发后提供的紧急援助。随着经济稳步走强，通胀率也加速升至30年来的高点，加大了美联储回调的压力。
央行撤回债券购买并最终加息，无论何时发生，都意味着一些借款人将不得不为抵押贷款、信用卡和商业贷款支付更多。
股票和债券交易员周三对美联储的消息泰然处之。在美联储发布政策声明之前，道琼斯工业平均指数已经上涨了400多点，收盘时上涨了338点，涨幅为1%。10年期美国国债收益率基本保持不变，约为1.31%。
经济复苏的速度超过了许多经济学家的预期，尽管由于新冠肺炎病例激增，劳动力和供应短缺阻碍了制造业、建筑业和其他一些行业，经济增长最近有所放缓。美国经济已经恢复到大流行前的规模，失业率从大流行发生后不久的14.8%跌至5.2%。
与此同时，由于消费者支出复苏和供应链中断，导致半导体、汽车、家具和电子产品短缺，通胀飙升。根据美联储的首选指标，7月份消费者价格同比上涨3.6%——这是自1991年以来最大的涨幅。
在最新的季度预测中，美联储官员现在预计将在2022年提高一次关键短期利率，在2023年提高三次——比他们6月份的预测多一次——并在2024年提高三次。自2020年3月大流行爆发以来，影响许多消费者和企业贷款的基准利率一直固定在接近零的水平。
美联储去年曾暗示，一旦经济在实现美联储最大就业和2%平均年通胀目标方面取得“实质性进一步进展”，它可能会开始缩减每月1200亿美元的美国国债和抵押贷款债券购买规模。
美联储在为期两天的会议结束后发表的声明中表示:“如果进展基本上如预期的那样继续，委员会判断，资产购买速度的放缓可能很快就会得到保证。”。
通胀已经上升到足以应对美联储对实质性进展的考验。鲍威尔在他的新闻发布会上说，在他看来，就业也“几乎遇到”了这一考验。
美联储没有暗示将会以多快的速度缩减购买规模。但外界普遍预计，该公司将每月减少100亿美元的美国国债购买量，减少50亿美元的抵押贷款支持证券购买量。
鲍威尔一再表示，他相信当前的高通胀水平将随着经济正常化而消退——部分原因是，他表示央行还没有接近加息。但美联储利率预测的变化表明，它正逐步接近这一目标。今年3月，组成其决策委员会的18名官员预测，他们在2023年之前根本不会加息。今年6月，该委员会将其预测修订为2023年两次加息。现在，它预计最快明年加息。
在最新的预测中，政策制定者还表示，他们预计今年经济增长将放缓，为5.9%，低于6月份预测的7%。它预计今年年底的通胀率为4.2%，但将明年的通胀预期从2.1%上调至2.2%。
鲍威尔还在努力解决围绕一些美联储地区银行行长的投资和交易的重大道德问题。达拉斯美联储银行行长罗伯特·卡普兰(Robert Kaplan)在财务披露中透露，他在2020年交易了价值数百万美元的亚马逊、雪佛龙、脸书和谷歌等个股，而当时美联储正在采取非常措施提振经济。
波士顿联储主席埃里克·罗森格伦(Eric Rosengren)去年投资了房地产投资信托基金，该基金持有美联储购买的抵押贷款支持债券，这是其降低借款利率努力的一部分。鲍威尔本人也持有市政债券，美联储去年首次购买市政债券来支撑市场。
一位发言人上周表示，美联储正在“重新全面审视”围绕其官员金融持股的规则。根据美联储目前的规定，这些投资是允许的，罗森格伦和卡普兰已承诺出售所持股份，并将收益再投资于指数基金和现金。
在新闻发布会上被问及这个话题时，鲍威尔说:“我们需要做出改变，作为结果，我们将这样做。这将是一次彻底和全面的审查。我们将收集所有事实，并寻找进一步收紧规则和标准的方法。”
随着许多国家的经济增长和通货膨胀加快，美联储预期的政策变化与发达国家的其他央行采取的类似措施如出一辙。欧洲央行本月早些时候表示，将减少债券购买，但尚未表示将完全停止购买。加拿大和澳大利亚央行也缩减了债券购买规模。
Fed: On track to slow support for economy later this year
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled Wednesday that the Fed plans to announce as early as November that it will start withdrawing the extraordinary support it unleashed after thecoronavirusparalyzed the economy 18 months ago.
Powell said that if the job market maintained its steady improvement, the Fed would likely begin slowing the pace of its monthly bond purchases. Those purchases have been intended to lower longer-term loan rates to encourage borrowing and spending.
“I think if the economy continues to progress broadly in line with expectations,” the Fed chair said at a news conference, "I think we can easily move ahead at the next meeting" in November.
At the same time, the Fed's policymaking committee indicated Wednesday that it expects to start raising its benchmark rate sometime next year — earlier than the members had envisioned three months ago and a sign that they're concerned that high inflation pressures may persist. Powell stressed, though, that a rate hike would occur only after the Fed had ended its bond purchases, a process that he said would likely last through the middle of next year.
Taken together, the Fed's plans reflect its belief that the economy has recovered sufficiently from the pandemic recession for it to soon begin dialing back the emergency aid it provided after the pandemic erupted. As the economy has steadily strengthened, inflation has also accelerated to a three-decade high, heightening the pressure on the Fed to pull back.
The central bank's pullback in bond purchases and its eventual rate hikes, whenever they happen, will mean that some borrowers will have to pay more for mortgages, credit cards and business loans.
Stock and bond traders took the Fed's message Wednesday in stride. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had been up more than 400 points before the Fed issued a policy statement, closed up 338 points, or a full 1%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was all but unchanged at roughly 1.31%.
The economy has recovered faster than many economists had expected, though growth has slowed recently as COVID-19 cases have spiked and labor and supply shortages have hampered manufacturing, construction and some other sectors. The U.S. economy has returned to its pre-pandemic size, and the unemployment rate has tumbled from 14.8%, soon after the pandemic struck, to 5.2%.
At the same time, inflation has surged as resurgent consumer spending and disrupted supply chains have combined to create shortages of semiconductors, cars, furniture and electronics. Consumer prices, according to the Fed's preferred measure, rose 3.6% in July from a year ago — the sharpest such increase since 1991.
In its updated quarterly projections, Fed officials now expect to raise their key short term rate once in 2022, three times in 2023 — one more than they had projected in June — and three times in 2024. That benchmark rate, which influences many consumer and business loans, has been pinned near zero since March 2020, when the pandemic erupted.
The central bank had signaled last year that it would likely start tapering its $120 billion-a-month in purchases of Treasurys and mortgage bonds once the economy had made “substantial further progress” toward the Fed’s goals of maximum employment and 2% average annual inflation.
“If progress continues broadly as expected, the Committee judges that a moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted,” the Fed said in the statement it issued after its two-day meeting ended.
Inflation has risen enough to meet the Fed's test for substantial progress. And Powell said at his news conference that in his view, employment has “all but met" that test, too.
The Fed hasn’t hinted at how fast it will taper the purchases. But it is widely expected to pare its purchases of Treasurys by $10 billion a month and mortgage-backed securities by $5 billion.
Powell has repeatedly expressed his belief that the current high level of inflation will fade as the economy normalizes — and in part for that reason, has said the central bank isn’t yet close to raising rates. But the changes in the Fed’s interest rate projections suggest that it's moving gradually closer to doing so. In March, the 18 officials who make up its policymaking committee predicted that they wouldn’t raise rates at all until after 2023. In June, the committee revised its forecast to two rate hikes in 2023. Now, it foresees a rate hike as soon as next year.
In its latest forecasts, the policymakers also indicate that they expect the economy to grow more slowly this year, at 5.9%, down from its June projection of 7%. It sees inflation at 4.2% by the end of this year, but raised its projection for inflation next year to just 2.2%, from 2.1%.
Powell is also grappling with a major ethics issue surrounding the investments and trading of some Fed regional bank presidents. Robert Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, revealed in financial disclosures that he traded millions of dollars’ worth of such individual stocks as Amazon, Chevron, Facebook and Google in 2020, while the Fed was taking extraordinary measures to boost the economy.
Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Fed, invested last year in real estate investment trusts that held mortgage-backed bonds of the type the Fed is buying as part of its efforts to lower borrowing rates. And Powell himself owns municipal bonds, which the Fed bought last year for the first time to shore up that market.
A spokesman said last week that the Fed is taking “a fresh and comprehensive look” at its rules surrounding its officials’ financial holdings. The investments were permitted under the Fed’s current rules, and Rosengren and Kaplan have pledged to sell their holdings and reinvest the proceeds into index funds and cash.
Asked about the topic at his news conference, Powell said: “We need to make changes, and we are going to do that as a consequence of this. This will be a thorough going and comprehensive review. We are going to gather all the facts and look at ways to further tighten our rules and standards.”
The Fed’s expected policy changes follow similar steps by other central banks in the developed world as growth and inflation have picked up in many countries. The European Central Bank said earlier this month that it would reduce its bond purchases, though it has yet to say that it will fully end them. The central banks of Canada and Australia have also scaled back bond purchases.
