Futures Market Forecast of a Federal Funds Rate Increase Likely to be Appropriate

According to the federal funds futures market, the Fed will begin raising rates sometime next year—with the federal funds rate reaching about ½ percent by December 2011. In fact, rising rates next year has been the implicit forecast of the futures market for the past year—except for the month of October during which many FOMC members were promoting quantitative easing. As this chart of the price of a December 2011 futures contract shows, a year ago the forecast was for a funds rate of over 2 percent next by the end of 2011. (The implicit forecast is obtained by subtracting the price in the chart from 100). Expectations of tightening have been rising again since the start of November, though thus far by a small amount.

This forecast is consistent with the Taylor rule and most recent forecasts for GDP growth and inflation. In fact, in my view it understates the interest rate that is likely to be appropriate by next December.

Most recent data (through the 3^rd quarter) show that the inflation rate is about 1.2 percent (GDP deflator over the last four quarters) and the GDP gap is about 4.8 percent (average of San Francisco Fed survey). This implies an interest rate of 1.5 X1.2 + .5X(-4.8) + 1 = 1.8+ -2.4 +1 = .4 percent which is close to where we are now. But most likely GDP growth will turn out to be above potential growth in the 4^th quarter bringing the gap down (Macro Advisers are projecting 3 percent with potential at 2.25 percent and JP Morgan is projecting 3.5 percent). Inflation is also very like to rise by this measure. For these reasons an increase in the federal funds rate next year is consistent with the Taylor rule.