New York Fed President John Williams Rules Out Recession

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said he expects the U.S. economy to avoid recession, despite seeing further interest hikes and another 75-basis point rate hike next month.

“A recession is not my base case right now,” Williams said in a CNBC interview. “I think the economy is strong. Clearly financial conditions have tightened and I’m expecting growth to slow this year quite a bit relative to what we had last year.”

The New York Fed head said “we need to move expeditiously,” when in the next meeting the debate will focus on a 50 or 75 basis point increase.

He noted that instead of a recession, a slowdown in the economy will really reduce the inflationary pressures and bring inflation down.

With prices increasing over 8% from a year ago in May, the highest level in 40 years, the Fed’s 2% target seems to be not easy to reach in the short term.

Consecutive interest rate increases this year total about 1.5 percentage points.

“My own baseline projection is we do need to get into somewhat restrictive territory next year given the high inflation, the need to bring inflation down and really to achieve our goals,” Williams said. “But that projection is about a year from now. Of course, we need to be data dependent.”