NEW YORK (Reuters) -Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran on Tuesday said that the U.S. bond market’s current relative calm supports a swift push to lower interest rates.
Given that market signals in reaction to Fed policy changes can carry valuable feedback in the wake of a policy change, Miran said “I would actually argue that the bond market behavior last year bore out my argument” that rates needed to be higher, “and this year, thus far, it is again bearing out my argument” for a swift pace of easing. He was speaking at an event held by the Managed Funds Association in New York.
Miran, who is on leave from the Trump White House to serve as a Fed governor, wanted the central bank to implement a more aggressive rate cut than the Federal Open Market Committee delivered at last month’s policy meeting. Miran reiterated in his appearance that an expected moderation in inflation as well as changes in the underlying state of the economy continue to argue for aggressive rate cuts.
That the bond market took the Fed’s latest easing with little reaction is a sign it supports a swift move down in rates, Miran said.
The central banker also said that amid a government shutdown over political wrangling over the budget, U.S. government data are still the “gold standard,” although “there has been some deterioration in quality in recent years due in part to declining response rates.”
“People have to believe that the data are reflective of the true state of the economy and not…doctored to achieve a particular, to achieve a particular political outcome,” Miran noted. His comment comes as Trump moves to install an ally at the Bureau of Labor Statistics after he fired a key government statistical official in August in the wake of a weak jobs report, raising questions about the reliability of the data.
Given some of the issues with government data, “I do think it’s important to have democratic accountability so that you can make sure that you are putting into place leadership” in government agencies that gets to “improving things over time, but that’s not really a Federal Reserve issue,” Miran said.
(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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