Investors may be underestimating the pace at which the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates over the next two years, said Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Short-term interest-rate markets have for months priced in a slower tempo of increases than policy makers themselves forecast. That’s risky because the misalignment, a bet against a rate path that the central bank alone controls, could lead to volatility if traders have to adjust rapidly, Lacker said.
“When there is that kind of gap, it gets your attention,” Lacker, a consistent critic of the Fed’s record easing who votes on policy next year, said in an Aug. 1 interview at his Richmond office overlooking the James River. “It wouldn’t be good for it to be closed with great rapidity.”
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Bank of Richmond. (Bloomberg)
Futures contracts on the federal funds rate show investors see a 62 percent probability that the benchmark will be 0.75 percent or lower at the end of 2015, less than the 1.13 percent median prediction issued by Federal Open Market Committee participants in June.
Lacker said the discrepancy may arise from skepticism about Fed officials’ forecasts, which call for unemployment to fall to 5.4 percent to 5.7 percent at the end of next year, close to their estimated range for full employment.
Investors may also be giving too much credence to a phrase in the Fed’s statement that even after employment and inflation are close to its goals, “economic conditions may, for some time, warrant keeping the target federal funds rate below levels the committee views as normal in the longer run.”
“They may be placing more weight on that than I think it deserves,” said Lacker, who dissented against his colleagues at every meeting of the FOMC in 2012. “They may think we have more conviction about that than we do.”
Lacker’s forecasts haven’t always been on target, which he’s acknowledged in his speeches. In a March 2012 dissent, he indicated the federal funds rate would have to rise “considerably sooner” than late 2014 “to prevent the emergence of inflationary pressures,” according to minutes of the meeting. The benchmark rate is still close to zero, and inflation is below the Fed’s target.
Some of his more recent forecasts have been closer to the mark. In June 2013 he predicted inflation would “edge back” toward the Fed’s 2 percent goal and economic growth would “fluctuate” around 2 percent, partly as a result of low productivity. By contrast, Fed officials in June 2013 predicted growth in 2014 of 3 percent to 3.5 percent, and inflation of 1.4 percent to 2 percent, according to their median projections.
The economy grew 2.4 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and productivity grew 1 percent in March.
U.S. central bankers continued to trim their asset-purchase program last month and said disinflation risks had subsided. They also said that although the unemployment rate had fallen, a range of other indicators indicate “significant underutilization of labor resources.”
Employers added more than 200,000 jobs for a sixth straight month in July, the longest such period since 1997, a Labor Department report showed last week. The jobless rate climbed to 6.2 percent as more people entered the labor force in search of work.
Policy makers in June forecast they would raise the fed funds rate above zero sometime next year, without specifying a month. Federal funds futures contracts show about a 57 percent probability that the rate will be 0.5 percent or higher by July 2015.
“The market is about in line with the Fed in terms of the timing of the first rate hike ― somewhere around June ― but is well behind in terms of the pace of tightening,” said Roberto Perli, a partner at Cornerstone Macro LP in Washington.
Central bankers also predicted the rate would be 2.5 percent at the end of 2016. Options on Eurodollar futures, which are more actively traded than federal funds rate futures in longer-term contracts, show a 69 percent probability that the rate will be lower than 2.5 percent.
“If the Fed proceeds according to its projections, the bond market, especially at medium and short maturities, would have to adjust a lot,” said Perli, a former Fed economist. That would create volatility not just in rate markets “but also in stock and currency markets.” (Bloomberg)
