By Michael S. Derby
March 23 (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran said on Monday it’s premature to draw conclusions about how surging oil prices will affect the U.S. economy, as he stuck to his guns and argued a softening jobs market requires more rate cuts from the central bank.
“We should wait for all the information to come in before really changing our outlook,” Miran said in an interview with Bloomberg’s television channel. When it comes to the huge jump in energy prices, “I think it’s just still premature to have a clear view about what this is going to look like as you look 12 months out,” which is where monetary policymakers need to focus.
Miran said “traditionally, you would look through an oil price shock like this, which means that my policy outlook from before is unchanged and my policy outlook from before would be gradual cuts of interest rates.”
Referring to last week’s Fed meeting and the release of updated forecasts, Miran said he’d trimmed back his expectation the Fed would need to cut rates six times this year to four in forecasts released at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting last week, while also bumping up his estimate of where inflation will be heading.
Last week, the FOMC held its interest rate target steady at between 3.5% and 3.75%, as officials collectively priced in one rate cut this year. President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has cast a serious cloud over the outlook, with surging energy prices both threatening to drive up inflation that’s already over the Fed’s 2% target while at the same time depressing demand.
Miran was the only official to vote in favor of a rate cut at the meeting. The official, who was until recently serving as a Fed governor while on leave from an advisory role in Trump’s White House, has consistently argued for aggressive rate cuts, of the sort favored by Trump but rejected by current Fed officials.
“I think the labor market still can use additional support for monetary policy, and that’s why I dissented last meeting,” he said.
Miran noted in his interview that “inflation risks have got a little more concerning, but the unemployment risks have gotten more concerning too, because the negative supply shock that is the oil price is also a negative demand shock.”
The Fed governor said the key thing to watch for is if higher oil prices begin to push up inflation expectations and drive up wages, neither of which he says is now happening.
Some Fed officials are weighing the possible need for interest rate hikes at some point if the oil shock drives up inflation enough.
(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Andrea Ricci)
