原文標題：
Fed keeps key rate near zero, sees inflation as 'transitory'
美聯儲將關鍵利率保持在零附近，將通脹視為“暫時性”
原文連結：
https://reurl.cc/Gd21yx
發布時間：
2021/04/29 about 3 hours ago By: The Canadian Press
原文內容：
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy is quickly strengthening, inflation is showing
signs of picking up and the nation is making progress toward defeating the
viral pandemic.
But on Wednesday, Chair Jerome Powell made clear that the Federal Reserve
isn't even close to beginning a pullback in its ultra-low interest rate
policies.
In a statement after its latest policy meeting, the Fed said it would keep
its benchmark short-term rate near zero, where it’s been pinned since the
pandemic erupted nearly a year ago. The goal is to help keep loan rates down,
for individuals and businesses, to encourage borrowing and spending. The Fed
also said it would keep buying $120 billion in bonds each month to try to
keep longer-term borrowing rates low, too.
At a news conference, Powell stressed that the Fed would need to see more
evidence of sustained and substantial improvements in the job market and the
overall economy before it would consider reducing its bond purchases. In the
past, Powell has said that the Fed's eventual pullback in its economic
support would start with a reduction in its bond buying and only after that
in a potential rate hike.
“We’re just going to need to see more data," Powell said. "It’s not more
complicated than that.”
Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, noted that "although it
took a more upbeat tone on the economic outlook and acknowledged that
inflation has risen, the Fed offered no hints that it was considering slowing
the pace of its asset purchases, let alone thinking about raising interest
rates.”
Powell did highlight the economy's improvement in recent months but said much
more progress was necessary.
“Since the beginning of the year, indicators of economic activity and
employment have strengthened,” the chairman said. “Household spending on
goods has risen robustly."
He also highlighted the striking progress the nation has made against the
pandemic — a key point given that the chairman has often said that the
economic recovery depends on the virus being brought under control.
“Continued vaccinations," Powell said, “should allow for a return to more
normal economic conditions later this year.”
The U.S. economy has been posting unexpectedly strong gains in recent weeks,
with barometers of hiring, spending and manufacturing all surging. Most
economists say they detect the early stages of what could be a robust and
sustained recovery, with coronavirus case counts declining, vaccinations
rising and Americans spending their stimulus-boosted savings.
In March, employers added nearly 1 million jobs — an unheard-of figure
before the pandemic. And in April, consumer confidence jumped to its highest
level since the pandemic flattened the economy in March of last year.
The quickening pace of growth, on top of additional large spending packages
proposed by President Joe Biden, have raised fears among some analysts that
inflation, long quiescent, could rise uncomfortably fast. Raw materials and
parts, from lumber to copper to semiconductors, have spiked in price as
demand has outstripped the ability of suppliers and shippers to keep up.
Some companies have recently said they plan to raise prices to offset the
cost of more expensive supplies. They include the consumer products giants
Procter & Gamble and 3M as well as Honeywell, which makes industrial and
consumer goods.
Powell, however, downplayed concerns that these trends could trigger
sustained high inflation. He said he expects supply bottlenecks to cause only
temporary price increases.
“An episode of one-time price increases as the economy reopens is not likely
to lead to persistent year-over-year inflation into the future,” he said.
Clogged supply chains won't affect Fed policy, Powell said, because “they're
temporary and expected to resolve themselves.”
Under a new framework the Fed adopted last summer, it will no longer raise
rates in anticipation of high inflation, which had been its policy for
decades. Powell and other Fed officials have made clear they want to see
inflation actually exceed their 2% annual inflation target — and not just
briefly — before they’d consider raising rates.
They’ve set that goal so that inflation would average 2% over time, to
offset the fact that it has been stuck below 2% for nearly the entire past
decade. Fed policymakers favour price gains at that level as a cushion
against deflation — a prolonged drop in prices and wages that typically
makes people and companies reluctant to spend.
One reason Powell has said he thinks the inflation pressures building in the
U.S. economy will prove temporary is that, for now, most Americans don’t
expect prices to rise much in the long run.
At his news conference, Powell was asked how the Fed would respond if
inflation expectations were to increase before the economy had achieved
something approximating full employment.
“For inflation to move up in a persistent way that moves inflation
expectations up,” the chairman said, “that would take some time, and you
would think it would be quite likely we would be in very strong labour
markets for that to be happening."
Once expectations for inflation do rise, they can be self-fulfilling: Workers
start demanding higher pay to offset expected price gains, and retailers
begin raising prices to offset increased wages and supply costs. This can set
off a wage-price spiral, something the United States last experienced in the
late 1960s and 1970s.
Apart from inflation, the Fed’s new framework includes a sweeping definition
of maximum employment that includes fully recovering the jobs lost to the
pandemic, including among many people of colour and low-income workers,
before it even considers a rate hike. Powell has also indicated that the Fed
would like the roughly 4 million Americans who stopped looking for work after
being laid off in the past year to be hired before it considers tightening
rates.
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