Expect high inflation this year
Tuesday – 6th of Ramadan 1444 A.H. – March 28th, 2023 A.D. Issue Number [16191]
Washington: «Middle East»
The United States will likely enter recession this year, and will face high inflation until 2024, as expected by the majority of economists in their response to a survey conducted twice annually by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).
More than two-thirds of respondents to the National Association for Business Economics survey believe that inflation will remain above 4 percent at the end of this year. And 217 members of the association participated in the survey, which was conducted between the second and the tenth of March, the foundation said in a statement.
The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 4.75 percentage points in an attempt to curb rising inflation, which last year reached its highest level in decades. The rise in commodity prices slowed to 6 percent year-on-year in February, higher than the Federal Reserve’s long-term target of maintaining a rate of 2 percent. Is experiencing a recession in the current period, compared to 19 percent who believed that in the previous economic survey, said the president of the National Association for Business Economics, Julia Coronado, in a statement.
Economists slightly raised the chances of the Federal Reserve achieving the so-called “soft landing”; That is, reducing inflation while avoiding recession, from 27 percent in August 2022 to 30 percent in March 2023.
The results of the independent poll are in line with the statements of Neel Kashkari, Chairman of the Federal Reserve (US Central Bank) in Minneapolis, last Sunday, to the “CBS” television network, saying that the pressures that the banking sector is facing in recent times and the possibility of a subsequent credit crisis are bringing the states closer. United States out of recession.
“It definitely brings us closer,” Kashkari said. What is not clear to us is the extent to which these banking pressures will lead to a full-scale credit crunch. This credit crunch… will then slow down economic activity. This is something we are watching closely.”
Kashkari, one of the Fed’s most vocal advocates of raising interest rates to combat inflation, added that it was still too early to gauge the “impact” of banking pressures on the economy, and thus the impact on the next FOMC interest rate decision.
The council raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point last week, but left the field open to the possibility of temporarily stopping raising them until the vision becomes clear about changing bank lending practices after the collapse of the “Silicon Valley” and “Signature” banks in New York this month.
“The pressure only started two weeks ago,” Kashkari said. There are some worrying signs. On the positive side, deposit exits seem to have slowed. Smaller and regional banks are beginning to regain some confidence. He continued, “At the same time, we have seen a lot of financial markets closed over the past two weeks. If the financial markets remain closed due to the concern of borrowers and lenders, this will indicate the possibility of a greater impact on the economy. Therefore, it is too early to make any predictions about the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.
The US central bank introduced an emergency lending program aimed at protecting other regional banks in the event of increased deposit withdrawals. The latest data showed money moving from smaller banks to major banks in the days after the Silicon Valley collapse on March 10, although Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week he believed the situation had “stabilized.”