The American economy had a modest to moderate pace of expansion in September until earlier in October. This occurred amid the hurricanes that hit the some U.S. regions, while the Fed stated that the latest readings of the US economy were issued yesterday, but still showed several hints of rising inflation. Moreover, the Federal Reserve said that the surge of hurricanes Harvey and Irma happened during the polling period which might have an unfavorable effect towards the economic growth in third quarter. As the report shows three out 12 Fed’s districts, including Atlanta, Dallas, and Richmond, suffered from major disaster from the storms. The Fed Reserve of Dallas, particularly, Houston, was badly affected and did not anticipate for a critical disruption in the long-term. Moreover, the report further underlined the Fed’s major issue which is the insufficient evidence for the increasing inflation amid the need of finding competent laborers. Excess demands were very drastic in healthcare and service positions, construction, skilled manufacturing, and transportation. Hence, these shortages constrain the growth of the business, according to the Fed. Nevertheless, it failed to lift wages higher and further resulted in slight changes in the overall selling prices in some regions, indicating an increase in manufacturing input costs. As for the Fed, there is nothing new about rumors on strong economic development and employment, however, there are widespread price pressures that followed which triggered probability that inflation will be fixed at the low level as the policymakers did not understand clearly the reasons behind. The current target inflation of the Fed downgraded to 1.3 percent versus the initial objective at 2 percent. On the other hand, Fed Chair Janet Yellen is expecting inflation to bounce back while the central bank is in the process of raising interest rates again by the end of the year.
PAUTAN SEGERA