WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it will look at a wide range of data in determining when to raise its benchmark interest rate from zero, dropping a pledge tying borrowing costs to a 6.5 percent unemployment rate.
“A highly accommodative stance of monetary policy remains appropriate,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement after a meeting in Washington that was the first led by Chairman Janet Yellen. In determining how long to keep rates low, the committee will assess progress toward its goals of maximum employment and 2percent inflation, it said.
That assessment takes into account a “wide range of information,” including labor market conditions, inflation expectations and financial markets. The Fed also reduced the monthly pace of bond purchases by $10 billion, to $55 billion.
The Fed is overhauling forward guidance after unemployment declined toward its 6.5 percent threshold for a rate increase faster than policymakers predicted. Yellen last month told lawmakers that the unemployment rate alone isn’t an adequate gauge of economic health and “there’s a great deal of slack in the labor markets still that we need to work to eliminate.”
The Open Market Committee repeated that it will reduce asset purchases “in further measured steps at future meetings.” At the same time, “asset purchases are not on a preset course.” The committee announced $10 billion in purchase reductions at the previous two meetings.
“Growth in economic activity slowed during the winter months, in part reflecting adverse weather conditions,” the Fed said. Even so, “there is sufficient underlying strength in the broader economy to support ongoing improvement in labor-market conditions.”
The central bank’s preferred gauge of consumer prices climbed 1.2 percent in the year through January and hasn’t exceeded its 2 percent goal since March 2012. That gives policymakers “ample scope to continue to try to promote a return to full employment,” Yellen testified to lawmakers Feb. 27.
Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota dissented, saying the statement “weakens the credibility of the committee’s commitment to return inflation to the 2 percent target from below and fosters policy uncertainty that hinders economic activity.”
In a Bloomberg survey conducted over the weekend, 76 percent of economists predicted the Fed would drop its unemployment threshold. Economists also predicted a $10 billion reduction in the monthly pace of bond purchases, according to the median of responses.
Yellen, 67, took over as Fed chairman last month after three years as deputy to Ben Bernanke. In that role, she helped shape the communications policies the Fed wielded as it sought to nurture a recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression.
After cutting interest rates to zero in 2008, the Fed embarked on large-scale asset purchases as well as forward guidance intended to convince investors that borrowing costs would stay low for a long time.
Starting in December 2012, the Federal Open Market Committee said the federal funds rate would stay low at least as long as unemployment was higher than 6.5 percent and the outlook for inflation didn’t exceed 2.5 percent.
With the unemployment rate at 6.7 percent last month, that guidance was fast becoming obsolete.
“It’s a relic of days of yore,” Brian Jacobsen, who helps oversee $241 billion as chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in Menomonee Falls, Wis., said before the committee’s statement.
Policymakers met this week as economic reports indicated the world’s largest economy is pulling out of a slowdown linked to unusually harsh winter weather.
Factory production rose in February by the most in six months as assembly lines churned out more cars, business equipment and chemicals, a month after snowstorms hampered deliveries of parts and materials.
Employers last month added more workers than projected after the weakest two month hiring gain in more than a year. The unemployment rate rose from 6.6 percent, a five year low, as more people entered the workforce.
Retail sales climbed in February for the first time in three months, claims for unemployment benefits declined and consumer confidence improved, reports showed last week.
“The economy is getting better, and it’s likely the softer patch we’re seeing is weather related,” Josh Feinman, the New York-based global chief economist for Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management and a former Fed senior economist, said before the statement. “I don’t know that all the headwinds are gone, but they’re clearly blowing with a lot less intensity.”
Business, Pages 27 on 03/20/2014