Claire Jones

Austan Goolsbee’s warning comes after survey shows consumers expect soaring price growth

Governor Christopher Waller says levies would only cause temporary increase in prices

Central bank chief vows to ‘focus on the data’ rather than get dragged into political debates

Austan Goolsbee warns it is ‘dangerous’ to overlook potential supply shocks triggered by trade war

Figure comes after Fed chair Jay Powell said there was no hurry to cut interest rates

A top Federal Reserve official has backed more interest rate rises if inflation sticks at its current level, saying immigration and aggressive fiscal stimulus are likely to keep US prices rising more quickly than in other rich economies. Michelle Bowman, one of the Fed’s governors and a voter on its rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, said she remained “willing to raise” borrowing costs again “should progress on inflation stall or even reverse”. Bowman’s remarks came in a speech on Tue…

US millionaires have signalled their support for Joe Biden’s push to make the wealthiest Americans pay more tax, in a sign that the president’s plan to impose bigger levies on extreme wealth is playing well with the country’s upper-middle class. A YouGov poll of Americans with assets other than their home worth more than $1mn showed that a majority supported a more progressive US tax system, one of the tenets of Biden’s economic strategy for re-election in November. Almost 60 per cent of the 8…

US Federal Reserve officials have signalled that they expect to cut interest rates just once this year, taking a hawkish stance on inflation as they held borrowing costs at a 23-year high. Updated forecasts on Wednesday showed the Fed’s median rate-setter anticipated making one quarter-point cut this year, surprising traders who had priced in two cuts prior to the report. The central bank held rates at 5.25 to 5.5 per cent. The new predictions marked a significant change from the Federal Open…

Mounting political heat is complicating interest rate decisions in the US and the UK, where central banks are weighing whether to cut borrowing costs as voters prepare to go to the polls. The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve want to avoid any perception that they were cutting interest rates to help incumbent governments, former officials and economists said, making it more likely they will swerve moves that are too close to polling day. The situation is particularly tricky for the BoE,…

A top Federal Reserve official has called for interest rates to stay on hold for an “extended” time, saying lowering borrowing costs before inflation was under control would put the foundations of US prosperity at risk. Neel Kashkari, Minneapolis Fed president, also told the FT podcast The Economics Show that Americans’ “visceral” hatred of inflation meant that some people would prefer a recession to a jump in prices. “The economy is, in the US, quite strong, the labour market is strong, infla…