Fed's Dudley urges caution on rate hikes, cites risks to US

[NEW YORK] The Federal Reserve should be cautious in considering an interest rate increase due to lingering risks to the US economy, one of the central bank's most influential policymakers said on Monday, appearing to signal the chance of a hike by the end of the year was fading.

While New York Fed President William Dudley said it was"premature" to rule out a policy tightening in 2016, he added that negative shocks were more likely than positive ones due to the unknown fallout from Britain's vote to leave the European Union, a strong dollar, and because it was safer to delay a move with rates so low.

"All three of these reasons - evidence that US monetary policy is currently only moderately accommodative, the fact that US financial conditions have been influenced by economic and financial market developments abroad, and risk management considerations - argue, at the moment, for caution in raising US short-term interest rates," said MR Dudley, a close ally of Fed Chair Janet Yellen and a permanent voter on US policy.

The comments, including a reference to uncertainty around the Nov 8 US election, suggested the central bank is leaning toward standing pat on rates until perhaps December - which would mark one year since it raised rates for the first time in nearly a decade.

Mr Dudley applauded recent investor expectations for a less aggressive US tightening cycle going forward, and warned that it was becoming increasingly clear that some post-crisis"headwinds" were likely to be permanent.

In an otherwise dovish speech to a joint New York Fed-Bank Indonesia conference in Bali, he said it was possible that the US economy would outperform expectations through year end, that financial conditions ease, or that other international risks fade. "For these reasons, I think it is premature to rule out further monetary policy tightening this year," he said in prepared remarks for the speech at a resort hotel.

Yet Mr Dudley was coy on just how many rate increases he envisioned, saying only that he expected the central bank to move at least more aggressively than current futures-market predictions for only one rate increase by the end of 2017.

While the world's most influential central bank struck some confident tones in a policy statement last week, more recent data showing the US economy has expanded at an annual rate of roughly 1 per cent so far this year emboldened those who think the Fed won't tighten monetary policy any time soon.

A Reuters poll of economists recently pointed to the December policy meeting as the most likely time for a rate increase.

Mr Dudley called the recent US GDP reading of 1.2 per cent annualised growth for the second quarter as "sluggish" but stuck to his expectation that the economy would rebound to about 2 per cent growth over the next 18 months, and said he was confident inflation would rise to the Fed's 2 per cent goal in the medium term.

He added that aggressive monetary easing in Japan and Europe this year boosted the dollar and, together, helped convince the Fed it could not raise rates as aggressively as it imagined back in December.

REUTERS