1. Was Something Structurally Wrong at the FOMC?
- Author:
- Alan S. Blinder
- Publication Date:
- 10-2024
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- There is little doubt that the Federal Reserve was late to start raising interest rates as inflation rose in 2021–22. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) made a substantial, though perhaps understandable, error in failing to raise interest rates until March 2022. Much of that policy error can be attributed to faulty forecasts of inflation, which the Federal Reserve shared with many other forecasters. It was not an outlier. But the error was not quite as consequential as the Fed’s sharpest critics allege. Even if the FOMC had started to hike rates earlier, the econometric evidence suggests that the effects on peak inflation would likely have been small. Supply constraints, not excess demand, ruled the roost. They came, driving inflation higher; and then they went, pulling inflation down. Blinder says that the FOMC’s August 2020 framework shoulders more of the blame for the inflationary surge than it should—probably because the new wording revised both of the Fed’s goals, low inflation and high employment, in dovish directions. For that reason alone, the framework will almost certainly be changed in 2025, given the high inflation since. But how? Blinder suggests that the August 2020 change in the employment goal, from symmetry to “shortfalls,” is sensible and probably not too important anyway. But the change in the inflation goal, from a 2 percent point target to flexible average inflation targeting (FAIT), was probably consequential. It may have made the FOMC slow on the draw as inflation gathered steam, and it may have kept monetary policy too tight for too long in 2024. In both directions, Blinder argues, a 1.5 to 2.5 percent target range would be a better choice. To answer the question in the title of this Policy Brief, that may be the structural flaw the Fed should fix.
- Topic:
- Economics, Monetary Policy, Federal Reserve, Interest Rates, and Supply
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America