Fed Faces Risk of Fourth Summer Slump While Pushing QE
By Joshua Zumbrun - Apr 8, 2013
This time, Federal Reserve policy makers are prepared for the summertime slump.
During the past three years, the Fed planned to cut accommodation early in the year only to boost it after economic growth lagged behind its forecasts. Determined not to repeat the error, the Fed will probably push on with $85 billion in monthly bond purchases through the summer, said Drew Matus, a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist.
“The fact they’ve been fooled multiple times by slumps in the U.S. economy means they’re going to be a little gun-shy on the exit strategy,” said Matus, deputy chief U.S. economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut.
Last week’s Labor Department report showing the economy generated just 88,000 jobs in March, the fewest in nine months, confirmed the concerns of William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, that the job market was weaker than it appeared. The April 5 report followed six months of payroll growth averaging 197,000.
“The recent improvement in payroll employment growth, which gets much of the attention, is out-sized relative to the growth rate of economic activity that supports it,” Dudley, vice chairman of the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee, said in a March 25 speech in New York. “We have seen this movie before. When this happened in 2011 and 2012, employment growth subsequently slowed.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/fed-faces-risk-of-fourth-summer-slump-while-pushing-qe.html
