El Fed rebajara el pronostico de crecimiento de la economia.
Fed Poised to Cut Growth Forecast
By LUCA DI LEO
Federal Reserve officials are poised to downgrade their outlook for the U.S. economy, a shift that will play an important role in the debate about whether the Fed should do more to spur growth.
Officials don't seem ready to do more just yet. They are more likely to spend much of their two-day policy-making meeting, which ends Wednesday, discussing what measures they might take if the economy falters again, as it did this summer.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
.The Fed's new economic projections, to be released after the meeting, will compare with forecasts from mid-June, before the economy stumbled. Officials are likely to lower their projections for growth through 2013 and to predict that unemployment could remain high—possibly above 7.0%—through 2014. Most of the policy makers are expected to forecast that inflation won't be much of a problem in the years ahead.
Such a bleak outlook, with little price pressure, would normally prompt the Fed to act. However, interest rates are already very low, and many Fed officials, including Chairman Ben Bernanke, believe it is Congress and the White House that should do more to aid the economy. Also, the economy seems to have picked up a little after the summer, giving the Fed time to assess the impact of steps taken in August and September to boost growth.
In June, the Fed predicted U.S. gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, would grow around 2.8% this year, 3.5% in 2012 and 3.9% in 2013. That is considerably stronger than most economists expect now. An October Wall Street Journal survey put economists' GDP forecasts at 1.5% this year, 2.3% in 2012 and 2.7% in 2013.
The unemployment rate, now 9.1%, is projected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal to ease to 8.7% at the end of 2012 and 8.2% at the end of 2013. That is above the Fed's current predictions of 8.4% unemployment for 2012 and 7.8% for 2013.
Fed officials are considering whether to use their forecasts more explicitly to signal policy moves and, in turn, to influence the economy. In August, the bank made a conditional pledge to keep short-term interest rates close to zero until mid-2013, hoping to get consumers and companies to borrow and spend more. Now it is considering making that pledge more explicit by saying that rates won't rise until unemployment falls below a certain level and as long as inflation doesn't rise too much.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans wants the Fed to commit itself to near-zero short-term rates until unemployment falls below 7.0% or until officials expect inflation to rise over the next two or three years to above 3% per year.
Some of the Fed's key decision-makers are pushing for stronger action. Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen, New York Fed President William Dudley and Governor Daniel Tarullo have over the past 10 days warned that the economy is at risk and that the Fed may need to purchase more securities—a step known to some as quantitative easing—to push down long-term interest rates. Mr. Tarullo has suggested buying mortgage-backed securities to revive the housing market.
However, other officials have spoken out against further credit easing. Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said the Fed shouldn't pump more money into the economy because inflation picked up this year, while Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said recent Fed action to push down long-term rates benefited traders but failed to create jobs.
Mr. Bernanke will probably want to see more evidence that the economy is too weak and prices too low before he moves toward buying more securities. In a recent speech, he focused on the benefits of better communicating the Fed's likely actions to the public. It was the chairman's last speech before the policymaking meeting, which is sometimes taken as a cue for what the Fed will do next.The chairman is scheduled to hold a news conference after the meeting, where he will have an opportunity to explain the committee's thinking in more detail.