A new president will enter the White House in 2025, but some debates remain the same. Wall Street analysts are split over the Federal Reserve’s next moves on interest rates, dissecting recent remarks from policymakers as 2024 nears its end.
With just one Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting left this year, Jerome Powell and his colleagues are wrapping up a period marked by the first rate cuts in the current cycle.
Optimists are hoping for a year-end rate cut in December, while others urge caution. Some banks project a steady path of cuts in 2025, potentially bringing rates to a neutral level of around 3.25%.
But not everyone agrees. Analysts at firms like Deutsche Bank warn that incoming Trump-era policies, such as inflationary tariffs, could stall further rate reductions.
“There’s two things. One is just the details of the underlying economy that we see now, which is [that] the consumer has remained resilient…the labor market looks more resilient and more stable than what we thought, and inflation has been higher over the last several months,” said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, in an interview with Bloomberg TV Tuesday.
“I think you’ll see that when the Fed updates their forecasts. The unemployment is going to come down, growth is going to come up, inflation is going to come up.”
Luzzetti added that these factors would likely lead to a pause in the Fed’s rate-cutting strategy, but the new policy would compound these factors.
“Overlay with that policy changes that we expect: extensions of tax cuts, perhaps further tax cuts, tariff policy which lifts inflation. All of that leads to this dynamic of stronger growth, higher inflation that stays above 2.5%, and a neutral policy rate that’s closer to 4% and the Fed’s above four.”
December’s meeting coincides with the Fed’s summary of economic projections, which is when the FOMC updates analysts on its forecasts for inflation, unemployment, growth, and more.
Updates reflecting an inflationary environment are unlikely to be inked into December’s projection, Luzzetti added, and will instead be included in the next scheduled forecast advisory in March.
Luzzetti’s take is at odds with those of some of his peers on Wall Street.
Brian Rose, UBS’s senior U.S. economist, for example, is sticking by his call for continued cuts throughout next year.
On Tuesday, he wrote in a note seen by Fortune: “The market has priced out some Fed rate cuts recently, but we still expect the Fed to cut rates a total of 125 basis points by the end of 2025, bringing its target range to 3.25%–3.5%, in line with our estimate of neutral.
“However, if inflation proves to be stickier than we expect, then the Fed would likely end up leaving rates closer to 4%.”
What voting members are saying
While all FOMC members are invited to share their thoughts with the committee, only 12 have voting power.
This alternates year to year, and in 2025, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee will have voting rights.
With geopolitical tensions still high heading into the new year—throwing into question supply-side stability coupled with potentially inflationary supply policies—Goolsbee outlined that he’s ready to deal with the ripple effects of such events.
Speaking to Matthew Klein of The Overshoot, Goolsbee said: “You have to figure out whether these are temporary supply shocks or permanent supply shocks. That matters a lot.
“And you have to figure out, is this a one-time cost increase but a temporary inflation shock, or is this something that’s going to keep spiraling and gets flooded into expectations?”
He explained: “The conventional wisdom…was you don’t tighten into a supply shock, but you try to prevent the secondary impacts on inflation.
“The direct impact of higher oil prices, there’s nothing you can do about that. You’re going to get inflation from it. But you try to prevent wage-price spiraling, you try to prevent it from getting folded into expectations where you can’t get rid of it. That’s still probably right.
“In a way we can’t yet update conventional wisdom for this episode until it’s done and we’ve actually figured out how much was supply and how much was demand.”
