Wall Street economists believe the Fed had sufficient reason to cut interest rates last month and that waiting too long could be risky.
More and more Wall Street economists are warning that the Federal Reserve will not pivot quickly enough after raising interest rates to their highest level in two decades. The past three months of tepid inflation data, along with a slowing U.S. economy and rising unemployment, have heightened calls for the Fed to cut interest rates at its meeting in two weeks. But that move seems unlikely. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on Monday in Washington that he has no intention of sending any specific signals about when a rate cut might occur. Most of his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee also don’t think a rate cut is imminent. But some prominent economists say the risk of waiting for a rate cut is growing, including Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius, Royal Bank of Canada economist Mohamed El-Erian and Renaissance Macro Research’s Neil Dutta. “We think the case for a rate cut is strong enough to be made at the July 30-31 meeting,” Hatzius said in a note Monday. “If the case for a rate cut is clear, why wait seven weeks?”