Fed’s Williams Offers Dovish Growth Assessment of Advanced Economies

June 27, 2017 Share Print 0

Central banks in the United States and other advanced economies will find themselves stuck with slow growth over the longterm unless fiscal authorities do something decisive to turn things around, a U.S. central banker warned Tuesday.

That dour view may come as a surprise given that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates earlier this month and plans to continue to do so gradually to keep the U.S. economy from overheating. Rising interest rates often signal optimism about economic prospects.

But, San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams said Tuesday, while the economic news is encouraging in the short-term, over the longer run it is bound to disappoint.

Aging demographics and a productivity slowdown are putting the brakes on global growth, he said in remarks prepared for delivery to Macquarie University in Sydney, with long-run yearly trend growth in the U.S., the euro area, the U.K. and Canada now estimated at just 1.5 percent. That is about half the normal pace before the financial crisis.

With growth so lackluster, monetary policymakers will have a harder time managing inflation and maintaining full employment.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.