Where's the Pricing Power? Little Sign of It in Fed's Beige Book
What Beige Book Report Suggests About Path of Fed Policy
This article is for subscribers only.
U.S. companies aren’t passing along higher input costs to consumers in the form of more expensive products and services. Instead, they’re accepting lower profit margins. That’s the gist of the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book report, which collects and presents anecdotes on economic trends from policy makers’ business contacts around the country.
The finding illustrates a seeming disconnect that policy makers have been puzzling over for months. A declining unemployment rate has failed to boost inflation, which has some of them questioning the wisdom of raising interest rates again this year following hikes in March and June.