저자: ChristopherWaller · 외국인
요약 보기
연준 이사 Waller는 1~2주 전 고용 부진(-9.2만)을 보고 금리 인하를 지지했으나, 호르무즈 해협 봉쇄로 유가 고점이 길어질 가능성이 커져 물가 우려를 키웠다고 설명. 노동 공급 증가가 0 수준이라 실업률 유지에 일자리 0명 증가면 충분하지만 체감상 수용하기 어렵다고 함. 유가 충격이 장기화하면 핵심물가로 전이될 수 있어 신중론이 필요하다고 주장. 관세 효과 제거 후 구조적 인플레이션은 약 2% 수준으로 보며 금리 인상 필요성은 낮다고 봄. 여건이 괜찮으면 올해 후반 금리 인하를 다시 주장할 수 있다고 함.
다듬은 글
Time now for an exclusive interview with Fed Governor Waller, Christopher Waller. Let's get to to Steve Liesman. Great time for this Steve in light of light of everything, I guess. Yeah, in Yeah, in light of everything is a good way to put it, Joe. Thanks very much. We're here in Washington with Fed Governor Chris Waller.
Governor, thanks for joining us this morning. Well, thanks Steve. Great to be back. Well, let's talk about the idea of the main stories out there, which is this the higher oil price. And you were a couple weeks ago not that concerned. Has Has your views changed given what's happened with the Strait of Hormuz and what's happening in in in the war in Iran?
Yeah, so 2 weeks ago when the jobs report came out and it was, you know, negative 92,000, I thought that's it. I'm dissenting. I'm supporting a rate cut. Cuz at that time exactly, it looked to me like this was going to be a very short-lived spike in oil. No inflation issues looked through it. Since that time the Strait of Hormuz was closed, this is looking like it's going to be a much more protracted conflict and oil prices are going to stay high for a longer time.
So, that suggested inflation was more of a concern than I was putting it. The second piece of information that came out and Chair Powell talked about this a bit in the press conference was that we've seen a lot of research recently that suggests that this year labor force growth is going to be zero or close to zero.
If that's the case, then you don't need any, you know, zero is the break even for net new jobs. For the unemployment rate not to change. Yeah, exactly. And then for the last 3 months it's averaged right around zero. So, I'm kind of in this kind of odd spot where like my brain understands the math, but I can't get through my gut that this is okay.
Right. So, that was kind of one of the things that made me just to emphasize that, what you're saying is a zero doesn't seem like it's enough. But you're saying the math suggests it is enough to keep the unemployment rate unchanged. Yeah, I've been doing this for 45 years an economist. If you told me zero was normal, I'd say you got to be out of your mind.
be saying that the Fed needs to respond to that because we're losing in the job market. I mean, the idea we'd get a minus 92,000 and the Fed would go, "Eh." Right. Whatever, you know, your head would explode. talk about your general framework for thinking through a rise in the price of oil and what that would mean for policy.
How much concern do you have that it bleeds into the core? Well, that's the issue. If it's a very high level and it stays high for months on end, then at some point it bleeds through because oil is an input into so many products. Uh this is very different than say a tariff on toys. You put a tariff on toys, it doesn't bleed through into all the other goods in the economy, but oil is a major intermediate import and it will at some point bleed through.
And that's where you worry about high and persistent oil shocks. It's not like a transitory goes up and then comes right back down. What does the history tell you about what what the Fed did right and what it did wrong? Now, obviously, Bernanke in 1996 wrote a paper that said the Fed over responded from from the '70s and the '80s and made the recession worse.
Um at the same time, you've just through a period of time here where you sort of ignored what you thought was a transitory increase in prices and you ended up with higher and persistent inflation. Yeah, I mean, that's the In the '70s, people forget it wasn't a one-time oil shock. It was a sequence of oil shocks.
So, you know, there if you get a a bunch of one-off things, it starts looking permanent. It doesn't look like a temporary, you know, just a few one-off things. But in responding to all that in the '70s, everybody kind of realized that maybe this was a mistake and you have to look through this stuff.
And that became pretty much central bank wisdom. From the '80s on is these kind of oil price things, they go up, they come back down, you don't respond to them. I always want to point out that something where the oil goes up and then it comes down is very different than oil goes up and then stays there for a long time.
That's where you get back to this issue where it bleeds through back into core inflation and then you do have to kind of respond. You can't just look through it. So, that's one of the critical things that I started thinking about this inflation problem may be worse than I think it is if this continues.
Now, we'll wait and see. We don't know where this We don't know where this is going to go. But, we have to sort of think maybe caution is warranted. And it's brings me back to one of the last points I wanted to make. In March of '22, before we were going to lift off the zero lower bound in March of '22.
And I had been advocating that we should go off by 50. Get off immediately raise rates by 50 basis points. After that, Russia invades Ukraine. And everybody was in kind of the same boat as here, you know, caution is warranted. So, don't do anything right now. And that's the same approach I took this time.
It doesn't mean that I'm going to stay put for the rest of the year. I just want to wait and see where this goes. And as if things go reasonably well and labor market continues to be weak, I would start advocating again for cutting the policy rate later this year. Walk me through the horizon of of different policy outcomes that you think um Chair acknowledged that there was a discussion at the meeting of rate hikes.
Where do you stand on that possibility? Well, I think if people are worried, I'm not speaking for any of my colleagues, I'm just laying out some theoretical points. If you think inflation inflation say in December of 20 '24 was headline PC was 2.8. It's 2.8 roughly now. So, there's like no change in inflation in all that time.
And if you're worried about it going up from here, then there's a sense in which people say, "Look, we've got to raise rates to get inflation back down and under control." I have taken the view that if it was 2.8 in December of '24 and 2.8 now, it's not structural. Cuz if it was structural and you believe tariffs were being passed through by 50 to 100 basis points, then inflation should be running 3 and 1/2 to 4, not 2.8.
So, if it's if the tariffs had any pass-through effect, then structural had to come down to maintain 2.8. Help people get that math. It's pretty interesting, right? It's It's You are We are making progress on underlying to one from tariffs. You had 2.8, you are 2.8, so therefore it should be 3.5 to 4.
to go down. so it didn't go down. So, you're think that that the structural inflation rate is coming more like two right now. closer to two. That's why I think once you get past the tariffs in maybe the second quarter, you're going to see inflation come back down. For just this reason. Once the tariff effects wash through, then all that's left is whatever structural change.
Now, if you think it's going to go bouncing way back up, but I don't think there's a need for rate hikes because of this kind of math argument I was just giving you that we're Yeah, we're not seeing any progress, but that's cuz tariffs are pushing it up while structural stuff is bringing it down, and on net it stays the same. You and I agree
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