Stagflation is a difficult problem to overcome, especially for central bankers at the Fed and around the rest of the world. There are few tools to combat both inflation and a slowdown at the same time. The strongest fix for an economic slump is to lower interest rates, but those have been at near zero for almost two years.
Rate hikes also tend to put more pressure on long term bond yields, which have already risen in anticipation of the Fed’s moves. Those tend to be partly inflationary because they make it more expensive to borrow money.
“There’s enough stimulus in the system to not worry about the ‘stag’ part of this equation for many quarters to come,” Jim Reid, global head of thematic research at Deutsche Bank, said in a report last week.
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That increases the chances that the Fed could misjudge the moment and tighten policy too aggressively if it starts to worry about the price stability (inflation) part of its dual mandate instead of the maximum employment (jobs) part.
“There’s always the risk of a policy error. The Fed is carrying a monetary policy nuclear football with them, so there is a potential for a mistake,” said Kristina Hooper, Invesco’s chief global market strategist.
That said, Hooper is not overly worried that Fed chair Jerome Powell is about to make a major monetary flub.
“You always want to be vigilant about something like stagflation, but we don’t have high unemployment right now and economic growth is above trend,” she added. “Do we run the risk of stagflation in a rising rate environment? Yes, but it’s unlikely.”
The Fed is in uncharted territory. Central bankers have had to deal with many crises in recent decades, but there is no modern playbook for how to handle the threat of runaway inflation following a global pandemic.
“The Fed’s monetary policy framework is essentially being…
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