Saturday, June 26, 2021

The Fed's next challenge: Wage pressure

Stock markets were rattled by the Fed's hawkish tone in the wake of the FOMC meeting. Markets took a risk-off tone, but Jerome Powell walked back some of the hawkishness during his Congressional testimony the following week. The Fed Chair stuck to his familiar refrain that inflation is transitory, dismissed the idea of 1970s-style inflation as “very, very unlikely”, and unemployment is transitory but labor markets need continued support.


In response, the markets rebounded and prices largely made in round-trip in pricing in most asset classes. But in order for the markets to continue accept the Fed's narrative, the next challenge for the Fed is cost-push inflation in the form of wage pressure. This will become more apparent with the release of the June Employment Report in the coming week.

The full post can be found here.



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