Will Vladimir Putin knock Jay Powell off his game? Doubtful.
While not a surprise, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not one of the data points the Federal Reserve has been regularly monitoring. That’s not to say the Fed is immune to geopolitical problems when it considers its strategies to influence the American economy. It isn’t. However, the Fed is locked into its own battle against inflation, which the attacks threaten to make worse.
For weeks, Federal Reserve leaders have signaled they would be ready to raise their short-term target interest rate for the first time since before the pandemic. It is the Fed’s biggest tool in hopes of cooling high inflation. The lingering question for investors has been, “By how much?”
