According to Bloomberg News, Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell should be able to strike a balance in the forthcoming weeks since he is aiming at reassuring Americans that the central bank will be able to tackle the high inflation and confront the ongoing war in Ukraine that is expected to cloud the economic outlook.
Powell will endorse the late signals his colleagues are sending about raising interest rates in March. However, Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine has undoubtedly instilled a sense of uncertainty that contributes to price pressures that might risk cooling the demands.
Building pressures
Data on Friday indicated that preferred price pressures for the Fed escalated by 6.1% in January compared to a year ago, which is thrice central bank’s target of 2% and one that is most since 1982.
Bloomberg News reports that US employers have added 400,000 jobs. In contrast, the average growth of earnings per hour escalated to 5.8% compared to a year earlier, which was as per the Bloomberg Survey of economists related to median projections.
A flurry of month-end data has been posted by Mexico related to unemployment, international reserves, and outstanding loans before the central bank can deliver the quarterly inflation report.
Brazil is expected to report about job creation and trade figures before the fourth-quarter data is posted on Friday, which is likely to show that Latin America is narrowly keeping at bay a quarterly contraction for the third time. As per forecasts by analysts, there is just a 0.3% growth in 2022 following a comparatively modest expansion in 2021 of 4.5%.
