Word: interest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with every now and then, especially when times are good. In fact, inflation is likely to revive only slightly, if at all. The Fed may not tighten at all, and if it does, it will most likely be with a small, one-shot move that's already been discounted. Interest rates a year from now may well be lower than at present...
...this occasion the board was composed of influential investment advisers, chosen to offer a different perspective from academic and corporate economists. The panelists disagreed considerably on the likely course of the stock market and the broader economy next year and after. But on the subjects of inflation and interest rates they chorused in unison: not to worry...
...sharp further rise in interest rates would be "a dagger in the heart" of the U.S. stock market, says Vincent Farrell, chief investment officer of Spears, Benzak, Salomon & Farrell, an investment firm. But he believes the dagger is well sheathed: "Interest rates have probably about run their course." Abby Joseph Cohen, who chairs the investment policy committee at Goldman Sachs, is more emphatic. Says she: "I think yields on long-term bonds cannot move much higher and stay there on a sustained basis...
...officially warned that it has a "bias" toward making money and credit tighter? Yes, allows the board, but the Fed may already have accomplished as much tightening as necessary--or maybe more--by subtle measures. True, it may kick up the "Fed funds" (very short-term) interest rate it controls by a modest quarter percentage point at its rate-setting meeting at the end of June--"just to prove it can do it, for practice," in Farrell's words. But such a move has been so widely expected, and discounted, that board members think it won't ruffle the markets...
...only reason interest rates are even as high as they are now, says Charles Clough, chief investment strategist of Merrill Lynch, is "the bond market's proclivity to identify growth with inflation." But that proclivity, in the board's opinion, is simply wrong: there is no inflation threat scary enough to push the Fed into drastic action. Prices did spike abruptly in April, but that, says Clough, was due largely to a speculative rise in industrial commodity prices that "has already lapsed." Though Asian countries are starting to recover from the crisis that knocked demand and commodity prices...