Tim Duy's Fed Watch

Oil, Inflation Expectations, and Credibility

In an IMF blog post, Maurice Obstfeld, Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, and Rabah Arezki offer a solution to the "puzzle" of the weak positive macroeconomic response to low oil prices. Specifically, they posit a sharp rise in real interest rates due to falling inflation expectations is the culprit:

Even though oil is a less important production input than it was three decades ago, that reasoning should work in reverse when oil prices fall, leading to lower production costs, more hiring, and reduced inflation. But this channel causes a problem when central banks cannot lower interest rates. Because the policy interest rate cannot fall further, the decline in inflation (actual and expected) owing to lower production costs raises the real rate of interest, compressing demand and very possibly stifling any increase in output and employment. Indeed, those aggregates may both actually fall. Something like this may be going on at the present time in some economies. Chart 3 is suggestive of a depressing effect of low expected oil prices on expected inflation: it shows the strong recent direct relationship between U.S. oil futures prices and a market-based measure of long-term inflation expectations.

Initially, I was a bit enamored with this idea. As I thought on it more, however, I came to see it as a cautionary tale of chart crime. But digging underneath the surface a bit uncovered some interesting questions about monetary policy and credibility. Specifically, how worried should we be that inflation expectations will soon become unanchored?

Obstfeld et al. rely on a version of this widely publicized chart to support their contention:

The first and most obvious problem is that this chart really proves nothing. For example, I could just as easily presented this chart:

Now I can tell a story that the rising dollar (note the inverted scale) is driving down inflation expectations and thus driving up the real interest rate. Oil, on the other hand, is having exactly the effect we might expect - just look at sales of light trucks and SUVs, not to mention vehicle miles traveled:  Hence, there is no paradox of oil. Lower oil prices are triggering the expected positive impacts. It's about the dollar weighing on inflation expectations that is creating the offsetting impact. Obstfeld et al. apparently do not try to distinguish their story from this one.

(Warning: wonkishness ahead.)

This problem, however, just scratches the surface. Look at either of the first two charts above and two red flags should leap off the screen. The first is the different scales, often used to overemphasize the strength of a correlation. The second is the short time span, often used to disguise the lack of any real long term relationship (I hope I remember these two points the next time I am inclined to post such a chart).

Consider a time span that encompassed the entirety of the 5-year, 5-year forward inflation expectations:

The correlation is less obvious to say the least (note too that changing the scale also suggests less correlation). Why does the correlation appear and disappear? Could any supposed correlation across selected time periods be spurious? 

That gets to another issue. When you show me this chart:

and claim there is a meaningful relationship, I see two nonstationary variables you are claiming to be cointegrated. The trouble with that is that while oil is a nonstationary process - it is not mean reverting, nor is there reason to believe it should be a mean reverting series. Inflation expectations, however, should be a mean reverting series.

Or more specifically, it should be mean reverting if the central bank is credibly committed to their inflation target. If the central bank is credible, then we anticipate that policymakers will respond with policy that offsets inflation shocks to maintain their inflation target. Hence, inflation expectations should revert to that target and we would expect the series to be stationary.

If inflation expectations are a nonstationary series, then shocks build in the series and inflation expectations would drift persistently away from the central bank's inflation target. Inflation expectations would be unanchored. In other words, if inflation expectations are nonstationary, then we have a problem. More on that in a bit.

It appears that oil prices are nonstationary:

Dickey-Fuller Unit Root Test, Series DCOILBRENTEU
Regression Run From 1987:05:22 to 2016:03:21
Observations 7523
With intercept
With 1 lags chosen from 9 by AIC

Sig Level Crit Value
1%(**) -3.43430
5%(*) -2.86246
10% -2.56729

T-Statistic -1.47895

while, luckily, inflation expectations are stationary:

Dickey-Fuller Unit Root Test, Series T5YIFR
Regression Run From 2003:01:14 to 2016:03:24
Observations 3444
With intercept
With 7 lags chosen from 7 by AIC

Sig Level Crit Value
1%(**) -3.43524
5%(*) -2.86290
10% -2.56752

T-Statistic -4.63374**

Which leads me to conclude that the recent correlation between oil prices and 5-year, 5-year forward inflation expectations is not indicative of an underlying relationship and hence policymakers should be wary of accepting the Obstfeld at al. hypothesis. Of course, this should not be a surprise as the theoretical underpinnings for such a relationship are weak. A level shock to the price of oil should not change inflation expectations five years from now.

(The same is true for the dollar as well. And while both the dollar index and oil prices are nonstationary, they don't appear cointegrated, suggesting that instances of high correlation are more spurious than anything else.)

Digging a little deeper, note the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers has a longer series of 5-year inflation expectations which shows less variability than 5-year, 5-year forward inflation expectations:

The UMich inflation series also appears to be stationary:

Dickey-Fuller Unit Root Test, Series UMICH5YEAREX
Regression Run From 1990:08 to 2016:03
Observations 309
With intercept
With 3 lags chosen from 4 by AIC

Sig Level Crit Value
1%(**) -3.45322
5%(*) -2.87105
10% -2.57180

T-Statistic -2.92456*

Consequently, I think we have evidence to support the claim that the Federal Reserve is a credible policymaker in the most important arena, that of maintaining stable inflation expectations.

I suspect the high variability of the 5-year, 5-year forward measure is attributable to financial market structural issues (depth of the market for TIPS, for example) rather than rapidly shifting inflation expectations. Hence, we would expect that should those structural issues lessen in importance, the measure will revert to its mean (assuming the Fed remains a credible policymaker). Nor should we read too much about inflation expectations in this measure. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has reached the same conclusion, which is why she is wary of claims that shifts in the 5-year, 5-year forward measure reflect inflation expectations - and why she refers to these measures as inflation "compensation" not "expectations." From the March 2016 press conference:

In addition, the Phillips curve theory suggests that inflation expectations are also an important driver of actual wage- and price-setting decisions and inflation behavior, and I believe there’s also solid empirical evidence for that. And it’s one of the reasons that I highlighted in my statement, and we continue to highlight in the FOMC statement, that we are tracking indicators of the inflation expectations that matter to wage and price setting.

Now, unfortunately, we don’t have perfect measures of these things. We have survey measures. We know that household measures, even when households are asked about longer- term inflation—at longer-term inflation, they tend to move in response to salient changes in prices that they see every day. In particular, when gas prices go down, which is very noticeable to most households, you tend to see a view—you tend to see responses about long-term inflation marked down. So that’s kind of an overresponse to something that’s transitory. So it’s difficult to get a clear read from those survey measures.

Inflation compensation as measured in financial markets also embodies a variety of risk premia and liquidity premia. And so, it’s also—we monitor those closely and discuss them in the statement in paragraph one, but, again, there’s not a straight read on what’s happening to the expectations that influence wage and price setting. But this model continues to at least influence my own thinking, and it certainly is a factor that I and at least some of my colleagues are incorporating in these projections.

Note too that she also questions the importance of the recent slight downward drift in survey-based measures. I would place more weight on those measures (I think others on the FOMC, such as Governor Lael Brainard, are similarly inclined). In any event, I think the Fed is moving in a credible way to either measure by moving more cautiously than anticipated in December. Hence, we should expect inflation expectation measures to remain stationary.

Of course, if expectations devolve into nonstationary processes (it is a long-period property of the data, hence we cannot definitely declare the answer in any finite time period), we should be very worried that policymakers have lost control of inflationary expectations. And at the present time, they would be unanchored to the downside, not the upside as often feared.

Bottom Line: Be wary of claims that oil prices are influencing inflation expectations; the recent correlation is likely spurious. Inflation expectations look to be following a mean reverting process, indicating that the Federal Reserve's has credibly committed to their inflation target. We should expect policymakers will maintain such credibility if they continue to react to inflation shocks with offsetting policy.

On Credibility

Narayana Kocherlakota and David Andolfatto have been discussing the issue of Fed credibility. This is my effort to weigh in on the topic.

I break the issue of credibility of monetary policy into two parts. The first I think of as “soft” credibility, or the perception that policy needs to follow a proscribed course due to some perceived promise. The second I think of as “hard” credibility, or the expectation that policymakers will pursue policies that maximize its odds of achieving its goals over the long run, price stability with maximum sustainable employment, regardless of perceived promises. We should encourage policymakers to pursue “hard” credibility and avoid communications or actions that lead to policy directed at achieving “soft” credibility.

Let’s step back to last summer. It was widely anticipated that the Fed would hike interest rates at the September 2015 FOMC meeting. Market turmoil in August, however, made the Fed think twice. It also encouraged no shortage of commentary urging the Fed to pursue what I consider “soft” credibility. Via Jon Hilsenrath at the Wall Street Journal:

After months of forewarning by Federal Reserve officials that they are preparing to raise short-term interest rates, some international officials attending the Fed’s annual retreat here this week have a message: Get on with it already.

Fed policy makers are wavering on whether to move rates up in September. Volatile stock prices, falling commodities, a strong dollar and signs of a deepening economic slowdown in China have created doubts at the U.S. central bank about the outlook for global growth.

International officials have been saying for months they will be prepared when the Fed moves rates higher, a message that is being echoed as central bankers, academics, journalists and others converge now in Jackson Hole for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual symposium.

“If you delay something that you were planning to do, then you leave the impression that your compass is different than what you led markets to believe,” Jacob Frenkel, chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase International and former head of the Bank of Israel, said in an interview Thursday. Market drama is increased by delay, he added.

What I wrote:

Hey, it's been a hard couple of weeks. Things changed. That certain rate hike became a lot less certain. Maybe that changes back by September 17. Maybe not. All of us Fed watchers probably won't come to agreement until September 16. Getting emotional and moralizing about change isn't going to stop it…Stocks dropped sharply. It is a clear sign, on top of other signs, that financial conditions are tightening ahead of the Fed, and arguably too much ahead of the Fed. If the Fed heeds that warning you have to remember that's their job. Smoothly functioning financial markets. Lender of last resort. All that stuff. Maybe things work out just fine if they don't heed that warning. I am not interested in taking that risk. Not enough upside for me.

Ultimately, the Fed took a pass on the September meeting. That I consider favoring “hard” credibility over “soft” credibility. Rather than meet a perceived promise to hike, Yellen & Co. stood down in response to changing economic and financial conditions.

Unfortunately, I fear the Fed took a wrong turn in the October meeting, setting up an expectation that a December hike was a certainty. Fed officials took much grief over their decision to skip September. Market participants subsequently priced out rate hikes for 2015. But the Fed had promised a hike, and they were damn well going to deliver. And they drove the message home in October with this line:

In determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting, the Committee will assess progress--both realized and expected--toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation.

According to some excellent reporting by Jonathan Spicer, Ann Saphir and Howard Schneider at Reuters:

When the U.S. Federal Reserve tweaked its policy statement last week and put a December rate rise squarely back in play, it took a calculated gamble that reaching for an old and controversial policy tool would get financial markets' attention.

That gamble was to specifically reference the next policy meeting as a date of a possible lift-off, and it had the desired effect: investors quickly rolled back bets that rates would stay near zero until next year.

But interviews with current and former Fed officials, and with those close to policymakers, show the decision to use what is called calendar guidance in central bank parlance and what some described as a "hammer" did not come easy. Some officials felt that even mentioning a date in the context of a potential policy change would be taken not as a contingent expectation but as a promise that would be painful to break...

...Yet Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her deputies got so frustrated that investors virtually ignored their message that a rate rise before the year end was probable that they decided last month it was a risk worth taking, the interviews show.

As a result, futures markets are now giving slightly better-than-even odds that rates will rise from near zero next month, compared with mid-October when the odds were less than 30 percent. In contrast, economists polled by Reuters have been leaning towards a December rate hike even before the Fed's last meeting.

So the Fed wanted to raise rates just to teach markets a lesson? Maybe the message was ignored because it was the wrong thing to do and market participants expected the Fed to pursue "hard" over "soft" credibility? More telling was this line:

On Oct. 16, Dudley got an earful from Wall Street bankers and economists on a New York Fed advisory panel criticizing the Fed for its muddled message, according to three people who attended the meeting.

The interviews with Fed officials and those close to the central bank suggest that it was around this time that the plan to hint at December in the next policy statement started taking shape.

That sounds as if Dudley was falling prey to the fetish of “soft” credibility. We need to pick a message and stick with it. That's what the guys on Wall Street say. They say we are going to loose our credibility. We need to get ahead of that.

And perhaps this is why the Fed’s decision in December always felt forced. Me, in December:

Given that the Fed likely only gets one chance to lift-off from the zero bound on a sustained basis, it is reasonable to think they would wait until they were absolutely sure inflation was coming. Even more so given the poor performance of their inflation forecasts. But the Fed thinks there is now more danger in waiting than moving. And so into the darkness we go.

I don’t think the Fed would ever admit December was a mistake, but at a minimum the decision to hold pat in March and dramatically mark down their rate expectations for further rate hikes in 2016 tells me the Fed thought they were certainly on the verge of making a major policy error and pulled back quickly. In my framework, the Fed shifted back to seeking to preserve “hard” credibility.

That said, note the tendency to try to goad the Fed right back into seeking “soft” credibility. From the March press conference:

Steve Liesman, CNBC. Madam Chair, as you know, inflation has gone up the last two months. We had another strong jobs report, the tracking forecasts for GDP have returned to 2 percent, and yet the Fed stands pat while it’s in a process of what it said it launched in December was a “process of normalization.” So I have two questions about this: Does the Fed have a credibility problem, in the sense that it says it will do some—one thing under certain conditions but doesn’t end up doing it? And then, frankly, if the current conditions are not sufficient for the Fed to raise rates, well, what would those conditions ever look like?

I hope Fed policymakers remain resistant to such taunts.

The Fed is especially vulnerable to the problem of “soft” credibility when they lay down specific markers. The infamous dot-plot is one such marker. Policymakers have difficulty explaining the dot-plot is not a promise of future action; it is nothing more than a guideline. But the instant they establish that guideline, the mere fact that it induces some market participants to believe a promise has been made creates the belief that not meeting that promise will cost the Fed credibility. “Soft” credibility. The Fed needs to distinguish between this and “hard” credibility.

Another such marker is the 2 percent inflation target. Although Fed officials have repeatedly warned that they assume there will be symmetric errors around the target, we don’t know that until we actually have above-target inflation. The rule was created in an era of below-target inflation, so it is easy to say the Fed lacks credibility on the inflation target. I have said so. But I have come to perceive this as another instance of “soft” credibility. I worry that if the Fed becomes concerned about their supposed credibility from inflation at 50bp below target, they will overreact to inflation that is 50bp above target. What we really want is the Fed to maintain inflation within 50bp of target without triggering a recession. That would be the “hard” credibility of meeting the Fed’s mandate over the long run.

Bottom Line: The Fed should be playing the long game. In my opinion, that means pursuing the “hard” credibility of choosing the path most likely to meet their mandate over the long run. This may require sacrificing some “soft” credibility along the way. That means not hiking rates – or hiking rates – despite a perceived promise to do the opposite. The Fed should not fret over those costs. They are minor and quickly forgotten. And worse yet, being a slave to the fetish of “soft” credibility only raises the odds of a policy error. They will do less harm by breaking their “promise” than by keeping that promise via a poor decision.

FOMC Preview via Bloomberg

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer sits on Chair Janet Yellen’s left shoulder, muttering:

… we may well at present be seeing the first stirrings of an increase in the inflation rate …

Fed Governor Lael Brainard perches on the right, whispering: 

… there are risks around this baseline forecast, the most prominent of which lie to the downside.

Yellen is caught in a tug of war between Fischer and Brainard. At stake is the Fed chair’s willingness to embrace a policy stance that accepts the risk that inflation will overshoot the U.S. central bank’s target. At the moment, Brainard has the upper hand in this battle. And she has a new weapon on her side: increasing concerns about the stability of inflation expectations.\

Continue reading on Bloomberg...

State of Play

We are heading into the March FOMC meeting next week. The recessionistas are on the sidelines, waiting for data to turn in their favor. I suspect they have a long wait. In the meantime, FOMC participants will hone their arguments as they prepare for what is likely to be a contentious meeting. At stake is not a decision of rates; they will hold steady. At stake is a decision on the balance of risks. Do they want to send a dovish, neutral, or hawkish signal for the April and June meetings? I expect them to default to the neutral/dovish side. I don’t think there is sufficient weight on the hawkish side of the FOMC to drive an aggressive rate signal at this juncture. 

Labor markets shook off the January “slowdown” with nonfarm payrolls rising an above-consensus 242k. The twelve-month trend is slowing, but ever-so-gradually:

The unemployment rate held constant near the Fed’s estimate of the natural rate:

 This is actually good news, as it reflects a faster pace of labor force growth:

The labor force participation rate is now 0.5 percentage points above its September low. Assuming this trend will continue, the US economy can sustain fairly strong job growth while unemployment rates drift lower very gradual, in line with the Fed’s expectations. It would also give the Fed a bit more breathing room with regards to raising rates. And it would help boost potential GDP growth as it helps offset weakness in productivity growth. 

Incoming data, including the inflation uptick, will solidify the positions of those FOMC participants opposed to an extended pause. A fairly clear split emerged in recent weeks. David Harrison at the Wall Street Journal:

The report likely will accentuate a growing split among Fed officials. On one side are regional Fed bank presidents such as San Francisco’s John Williams, Richmond’s Jeffrey Lacker and Kansas City’s Esther George who continue to press for rate increases this year. In the other camp are policy makers who prefer to take a more cautious approach and wait until the effects of the global financial turmoil and the fall in oil prices have played themselves out. Count the Dallas Fed’s Robert Steven Kaplan, Boston’s Eric Rosengren and Philadelphia’s Patrick Harker among them.

And to be sure, the Fed will have its external critics as well. Drew Matus, chief US economist at UBS, told Bloomberg Surveillance that the Fed will “take the cowards way out” by not raising interest rates in the first half of this year. 

I don’t find this a compelling interpretation. If you are a “coward” by definition you are not “brave.” And one should remember there is a fine line between “brave” and “foolhardy.” I suspect that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will wisely follow Falstaff’s advice and recognize that discretion is the better part of valor. True, one can argue that some financial indicators have stabilized since the January FOMC meeting:

To be sure stocks and oil are off their lows, while the dollar is off its highs. Even market-based inflation expectations are heading back up. Panic has subsided. On the surface, that may add weight to the argument that the Fed should “just follow the data.” But corporate bond spreads, although narrowing, still indicate fairly tight credit conditions:

This is on top of a very cold IPO market. So while incoming data points toward solid growth in Q1, the Fed still needs to stand down while the lagged impacts of this winter’s financial tightening pass through to the real economy. Discretion. Yes, this does put the Fed at risk of falling behind the curve. A dovish Fed now on the back of an improving economy suggests that the yield curve will steepen in the near term. If necessary, the Fed can chase that with a higher fed funds rate in the back half of the year. 

Also suggesting caution on the part of the Fed is a renewed awareness of the sensitivity of global financial flows to the Fed’s policy stance. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard:

Financial tightening associated with cross-border spillovers may be limiting the extent to which U.S. policy diverges from major economies. As policy adjusts to the evolution of the data, the combination of heightened spillovers from weaker foreign economies, along with a lower neutral rate, could result in a lower policy path in the United States relative to what many had predicted…

And New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley:

Our monetary policy actions, however, often have global consequences that, in turn, influence the U.S. economy and financial markets. At the same time, external factors can impact the monetary policy transmission mechanism in the U.S. and influence the effectiveness of our monetary policy in achieving our objectives. We cannot appropriately calibrate policy without keeping these spillover and feedback effects in mind.

The degree to which the Federal Reserve can tighten short-term rates is limited by the extent of global feedback effects. In short, the Fed has limited capacity to defy the pattern of zero (or negative) rates abroad. 

Overall, I don’t believe a Federal Reserve pause is inconsistent with the data. All it takes is the realization that financial market outcomes are in fact data. Ultimately just prices and quantities of bonds and stocks and other assets – data just like any other data that measure prices and quantities of labor or goods. Data that provides insight into the direction of the economy. Or, as Dudley explained:

The federal funds rate is only one element of the broader set of financial conditions affecting the U.S. growth and inflation outlook. Tighter financial conditions abroad do spill back into the U.S. economy, and policymakers must take this into account in their assessment of appropriate monetary policy. Of course, this does not mean that we will let market volatility dictate our policy stance. There is no such a thing as a “Fed put.” What we care about is the country’s growth and inflation prospects, and we take financial market developments into consideration only to the extent that they affect the economic outlook.

Still, I am sympathetic to complaints of communication confusion. Harrison concludes his article:

Fed officials, chief among them Ms. Yellen, have repeated for months that their interest-rate decisions will depend on the economic data. It could be harder to make that case if it appears the central bank is acting contrary to increasingly strong data.

The Summary of Economic Projections is a woefully incomplete description of the Fed’s reaction function. It attempts to distill the Fed’s reaction function into a simple Taylor rule that abstracts away from financial sector. In other words, it does not capture the role of the financial sector in the Fed’s reaction function. And I think it fails to do so because of complex endogeneities involved (the Fed is in integral part of the financial sector) and, as a consequence, a lack of consensus about the implications for the Fed’s reaction function. 

Indeed, Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester, Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George, San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams, and Board of Governors Vice Chair Stanley Fischer all appear to discount the importance of the Fed’s financial reaction function (see here and here for example). Brainard and Dudley clearly see a more complex relationship. 

Where does Yellen stand? My sense is that six month ago Yellen’s position would align close to Fischer. But I think she would now find Brainard’s position more persuasive, especially with Dudley’s support. That suggests that the Yellen will work to pull the Fed toward a neutral/dovish statement.

Bottom Line: Fed will hold steady next week. Key FOMC participants are shifting in a dovish direction. The financial market volatility, which induced clear tightening in financial conditions, bolstered the Brainard’s arguments. Despite solid incoming data, the Fed will find it necessary to tread cautiously in the months ahead.

Dudley the Dove

The beleaguered manufacturing sector saw an uptick in February, at least according to the ISM report:  This information builds on the stronger consumer spending and inflation numbers we saw last week. Not to mention solid auto sales for February. The news is sufficiently good that Torsten Sløk of Deutsche Bank argues (via Business Insider) that the Fed should raise rates:

Today we got more confirmation that the negative effects of dollar appreciation on the US economy are starting to fade, see the first chart below. Specifically, we have in recent months seen a solid turnaround in the employment data for the manufacturing sector and in the manufacturing ISM. Combined with the acceleration we are seeing in consumer spending and inflation I would argue that if the Fed is truly data dependent then they should be raising rates at their next meeting...

I don't think the Fed will raise in March, nor do I think they should raise in March. I think the financial markets signaled fairly clear that further tightening now would be a mistake. The Fed would be wise to heed that call.

And, if New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley is any indication, they will heed that call. Indeed, he goes even further than me. Whereas yesterday I raised the possibility of a "hawkish pause" at the March meeting where the Fed revives the balance of risks with an upside bias, he opens the door to the opposite.

First, note that Dudley appears unmoved by the uptick in core inflation:

Turning to the outlook for inflation, headline inflation on a year-over-year basis has begun to rise as the sharp falls in energy prices in late 2014 and early 2015 are removed from the calculations. However, inflation still remains well below the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent objective. As the FOMC has noted in its statements, this continued low inflation is partly due to recent further declines in energy prices and ongoing impacts of a stronger dollar on non-energy import prices. Although energy prices will eventually stop falling and the dollar will stop appreciating, these factors appear to have had a more persistent depressing influence on inflation than previously anticipated.

This is actually quite dovish. If core inflation is a good signal for the direction of overall inflation, then the latter will leap sharply when the "transitory" impacts fades. This suggests to me that the forecast of a gradual return to target is almost certainly wrong. When (and if) inflation turns, it will turn quickly. Dudley is discounting that possibility.  

I suspect he is discounting inflation concerns because he is focussed on inflation expectations:

This continued period of low headline inflation is a concern, in part, because it could lead to significantly lower inflation expectations. If this drop in inflation expectations were to occur, it would, in turn, tend to depress future inflation. Evidence on the inflation expectations front suggests some cause for concern...

...With respect to the market-based measures, there are some reasons to discount the decline...Still, given the extent to which inflation compensation has fallen since mid-2014, I believe that it is prudent to consider the possibility that longer-term inflation expectations of market participants may have declined somewhat.

What I find more concerning is the decline in some household survey measures of longer-term inflation expectations....To date, these declines have not been sufficiently large for me to conclude that inflation expectations have become unanchored. However, these developments merit close scrutiny, as past experience shows that it is difficult to push inflation back up to the central bank’s objective if inflation expectations fall meaningfully below that objective. Japan’s experience is cautionary in this regard.

Asymmetric risk surrounds inflation expectations. Difficult to raise up, but easy to push down. Hence, it is important to guard against falling expectations. This is especially the case as he sees risks to the outlook as now tilted to the downside:

Now, putting these inputs and my judgment together, I see the uncertainties around my forecast to be greater than the typical levels of the past. This assessment reflects the divergent economic signals I highlighted earlier, and is consistent with the turbulence we have seen in global financial markets. At this moment, I judge that the balance of risks to my growth and inflation outlooks may be starting to tilt slightly to the downside. The recent tightening of financial market conditions could have a greater negative impact on the U.S. economy should this tightening prove persistent and the continuing decline in energy and commodity prices may signal greater and more persistent disinflationary pressures in the global economy than I currently anticipate. I am closely monitoring global economic and financial market developments to assess their implications for my outlook and the balance of risks.

Hence Dudley is likely to stand as a bulwark against FOMC participants who think the Fed should hike in March and those who would like a more optimistic balance of risks. Moreover, this is a pretty clear signal of his expectations for March:

The federal funds rate is only one element of the broader set of financial conditions affecting the U.S. growth and inflation outlook. Tighter financial conditions abroad do spill back into the U.S. economy, and policymakers must take this into account in their assessment of appropriate monetary policy. Of course, this does not mean that we will let market volatility dictate our policy stance. There is no such a thing as a “Fed put.” What we care about is the country’s growth and inflation prospects, and we take financial market developments into consideration only to the extent that they affect the economic outlook.

In other words, when we don't hike in March, it's not because of a Fed "put" on the stock market. It is more accurately a Fed "put" on the economy. Financial market weakness signals tighter financial conditions, and to prevent those conditions from spilling into the rest of the economy, the Fed needs to respond with a more accommodative policy stance. The Fed then is not saving Wall Street. It is saving Main Street from Wall Street.

The upshot is that if the economy remains on firm ground (the "no recession" camp), inflation is heating up, and the Fed goes solidly dovish, we should see the yield curve steepen in the near term, at least until the Fed turns hawkish again. If we are really lucky, the secular stagnation story is wrong and the entire yield curve lifts up as the Fed chases higher rates. Then we could really imagine the "short treasuries" bet to be a no-brainer.  If secular stagnation remains the order of the day, then the long end quits rising soon after the Fed sends out hawksh signals, setting the stage for a renewed flattening. 

An interesting possibility is that in the back half of 2016, inflation pops above trend and one of the Fed's fears is realized. That fear is that they fall behind the curve and need to raise rates quickly to counteract rising inflation. They seem to think that they have no choice at that point but to murder the expansion. I disagree with that conclusion. I think they tend to forget about the long and variable lags of policy at the end of the cycle and consequently rush raising rates needlessly. In any event, how they respond to (potentially) higher inflation later this year will shape the 2017 and 2018 economic environment. So, obviously it is something to keep an eye on.

Bottom Line: The Fed will take a pass on the March meeting. Whether the statement is dovish, neutral, hawkish is the key question. Dudley opens up the possibility of a not just a neutral statement, but a dovish one. My sense is that this is shaping up to be a very contentious meeting as participants struggle with the question of exactly which data are they dependent upon.