Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari argues the central bank shouldn’t raise its key policy interest rate again until inflation manages to hit the organization’s 2% target.
“Make an announcement today that we will not raise rates until we get core inflation back to our 2% target,” Kashkari said during a “Squawk Box” appearance Monday on CNBC. “That’s not a commitment to cut rates, that’s not a commitment to hold forever, it’s simply saying we’re not going to raise rates prematurely.”
So things may just hold steady for a while after the Federal Open Market Committee slashed the benchmark interest rate by another 25 basis points to a range between 1.5% and 1.75% last week. It was the third cut this year, and the FOMC signaled it is most likely the last one for a while.
Core inflation, which removes volatile food and energy prices from the equation, is currently sitting around 1.7%, which may be holding up any future decision on interest rates. Core inflation hasn’t hit 2% since December 2018.
While Kashkari is not a a current voting member of the FOMC, he seems to be on the same page as Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who mentioned there would need to be a “really significant” inflation bump for a rate hike to happen when he announced the latest cut last week.
The U.S. labor market may be one of the biggest arguments to keep rates steady. While unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.6%, Kashkari thinks there is still plenty of growth potential for wages, which have been lackluster.
“That has now been true for two or three years going forward,” he said. “And I think Chairman Powell has really embraced the view that there is still slack in the labor market, and that is just resoundingly good news for the American people and I hope it continues.”
The FOMC is set to meet one final time this year in December to make another decision concerning interest rates, but markets also don’t see it happening. The CMEGroup FedWatch tool shows a 93.4% chance that rates stay the same, and only a 6.6% chance of another cut of 25 basis points as of Monday morning.
“I think as of right now that data looks pretty good,” Kashkari said. “If the economy continues to perform as we expect, I would expect that we’re done for a while. But we need to see. I think things can change pretty quickly.”
