A Soft Landing for the US Economy Could Slip Away
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Businesses and consumers can withstand overly restrictive borrowing costs for only so long. Stocks and bonds rallied at the end of last year on the hope of a seemingly improbable combination of dynamics playing out to support financial assets in 2024 — cooling inflation, solid economic growth, a resilient labor market, and as much as 150 basis points of interest-rate cuts. Economic growth to start the year, but some recent data and comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell have made that nirvana-like set of conditions less probable. A couple of key business sentiment measures have raised the possibility that a pickup in production could fuel a pickup in inflation. At the same time, Powell has said that the Fed wants further evidence of a sustainable easing in price pressures before cutting rates.



https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-07/a-soft-landing-for-the-us-economy-could-slip-away