Goldman Pushes Back Rate Hike Forecast Citing Slowing Job Growth And Weak Inflation

After last month’s “much stronger than expected” jobs report, Goldman was convinced that the Fed would hike in June and September, while disclosing its balance sheet tapering announcement in December. However, after today’s disappointing jobs report, Jan Hatzius has flipped the last two, and says that he “now expects the third hike of 2017 to occur at the December meeting (we previously expected a hike in September and a balance sheet in announcement in December).”

The reason for the switch is that “the committee will prefer to wait for clarity on the outlook before implementing a third hike this year – particularly given signs of slowing job growth and the recent drop in core inflation.“

Key excerpt:

Given the drop in the U3 and U6 unemployment rates and the lack of additional catalysts between now and the June meeting, we are increasing our subjective probability of a hike at that meeting from 80% to 90%. We are also moving forward our forecast for balance sheet normalization. We now expect the committee to announce a tapering of maturity reinvestments in September, and we now expect the third hike of 2017 to occur at the December meeting (we previously expected a hike in September and a balance sheet in announcement in December). This change reflects recent detailed discussion of the balance sheet among committee members, as well as our view that the committee will prefer to wait for clarity on the outlook before implementing a third hike this year – particularly given signs of slowing job growth and the recent drop in core inflation.

Expect the rest of Wall Street to jump on the bandwagon shortly,

source http://capitalisthq.com/goldman-pushes-back-rate-hike-forecast-citing-slowing-job-growth-and-weak-inflation/