Lates News

Nick Timiraos, the "mouthpiece of the Federal Reserve," stated that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's policy response function has shifted to be less dovish. His comments this year suggest that the Federal Reserve should continue to maintain interest rates unchanged. Earlier this year, Yellen referenced models indicating that the level of the Federal Reserve's interest rates may exceed the neutral rate by a range of more than 25 basis points to over 100 basis points. Today (August 4), she presented two viewpoints. Firstly, she defended Waller's decision last week not to elaborate on any policy response functions: I believe every meeting should be open for market participants to make their own judgments... I think Waller wants to keep his options open to achieve the best outcome. Secondly, she indeed proposed a set of policy response functions that could be seen as dovish and argued that recent shocks should be ignored: What impact will the rise in short-term interest rates ultimately have? We will wait and see. She raised this question but then answered it by pointing out that underlying inflation is very mild... very stable. Core inflation, after excluding the more volatile elements impacted by energy, has remained very stable. I believe this situation will continue.