It's prudent for the Fed to 'wait and see' before cutting rates, says IMF's Gita Gopinath

The US economy, firstly, is doing really well in terms of the growth numbers. It has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations. And along with that, we’ve certainly seen inflation somewhat more stronger than was expected. Now that said, we’ve been saying that this is going to be a bumpy Rd. the last mile is going to be bumpy and we are seeing bumps along the way. Now, given the strength of the US economy, it makes sense to take a prudent approach, which is to wait and see, make sure that the inflation numbers really are durably moving towards the 2% target. So there is absolutely a reason to wait now and wait for more data to come before starting an easing cycle. Bumpiness is one thing, but I think there are concerns that the data is hitting another springboard, recognizing inflation potentially. If you look at the numbers from jobs to CPI retail data recently, does this suggest that there may be no landing at all for the US economy? It’s too early to say that. I would say that we are still in the bumpy process. We do expect inflation to get back down to target. It may not all happen as quickly, but we expect it to go down. And if you look at the labor market, it is strong, but at the same time, it has softened and wage growth has softened. So there are indicators that favorable productivity growth in the US is also strong, which also helps with bringing inflation down South. So no, I don’t believe we’re at a point where we are, you know diverging and moving in the direction of inflation getting really high all over again. Are the Hawks helping over at the Fed, A little bit of jaw burning goes a long way. So some of the the financial loosening that we’ve seen that comes back into play effectively with the weaker data, but the role now we’ve seen from the jaw burning over from the Hawks can actually help the Fed get back towards target because it’s doing some of the work for the Fed without moving on policy. You know, Fed communication matters a lot for financial conditions and we have seen financial conditions ease in these early months of this year. But that said, you know anything that shows that this process of monetary easing can be delayed, you know, we’ll certainly give pause to markets. But at the same time we should recognize that this goes along with a strong U.S. economy. Does financial stability versus battling inflation come back into play? I mean, we’ve already seen some casualties in the US banking system. If you’ve got a higher for longer rate story again this year, does that mean there could be more consequences for banks? Well, in the near term, given the health of the banks, given the health of the economy, we don’t see that as a major risk. Now that said, the question is how long it takes for the easing cycle to start and that’s going to play an important role. We have flagged the concern of the commercial real estate market, which is 1 potential area where we could see risks building. But more broadly, we don’t really see a systemic issue at this point.