--- title: "Inaction leads to policy mistakes? \"Minority economists\" criticize the Federal Reserve for misjudging the situation again" type: "News" locale: "zh-CN" url: "https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279704291.md" description: "An economist criticized the Federal Reserve for failing to cut interest rates, deeming it a policy mistake, especially against the backdrop of a deteriorating labor market. He pointed out that the Federal Reserve missed a crucial opportunity to lower rates by maintaining them unchanged amid economic weakness. The economist Marko Bjegovic published an analysis on social media, emphasizing that current rates remain in a restrictive range and expressing concerns about the Federal Reserve's decisions" datetime: "2026-03-19T01:59:05.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279704291.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/279704291.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/279704291.md) --- > 支持的语言: [English](https://longbridge.com/en/news/279704291.md) | [繁體中文](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/279704291.md) # Inaction leads to policy mistakes? "Minority economists" criticize the Federal Reserve for misjudging the situation again According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Marko Bjegovic, a senior macroeconomist from Arkomina Research, stated after the Federal Reserve announced its decision to hold interest rates steady that the central bank missed a critical opportunity for rate cuts amid rising unemployment, committing a policy error. In an analysis report published on social media, Bjegovic outlined several concerns regarding the Federal Reserve policymakers' decision to maintain current interest rates despite increasing signs of economic weakness in the U.S. and globally. Marko Bjegovic has over 17 years of experience in financial market trading, having previously worked as a stock broker, investment advisor, head of equity trading, and chief macroeconomist at a bank; his Substack subscription page currently shows approximately 3,000+ subscribers. This economist is more like a representative of "minority economists," and his most recognizable subscription products may include high-frequency macro tracking content such as CPI forecast reports, PCE forecast reports, and Federal Reserve monetary policy observation reports. He has consistently shown a smaller prediction error for core economic data like CPI/PCE, significantly outperforming Wall Street's average expectations, and has repeatedly issued ultimately correct pessimistic views when the market consensus expected optimistic data, thus gaining a large following of fans who adhere to his investment strategies. **Powell: Inflation stickiness remains prominent, and it is still too early to assess the impact of the war** In the early hours of Thursday Beijing time, the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy decision revealed that, as financial markets expected, the Fed paused rate cuts for the second consecutive meeting. In the meeting statement, the Fed added a description of the uncertainty regarding the impact of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East on the U.S. economy, and the unemployment rate was revised from showing some signs of stabilization to "basically unchanged." The market's focus on the dot plot of interest rates shows that the outlook path for the Fed policymakers' rates is largely consistent with the last dot plot published in December last year, still expecting only one 25 basis point rate cut in 2026 and only one rate cut next year. Meanwhile, in the latest economic forecast, the Fed raised its year-end PCE inflation forecast from 2.4% in December last year to 2.7%, and core PCE from 2.5% to 2.7%. Under the impact of rising oil prices, some officials even put the "possibility of rate hikes" back on the table. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell clearly stated at the post-meeting press conference that the Fed may not return to a rate-cutting trajectory until inflation shows signs of cooling again. Moreover, this has not yet begun to consider the inflationary expansion effects that may arise from the Middle East war, emphasizing that it is still too early to assess the impact of the war. Powell emphasized during the press conference on Wednesday that it is still too early to evaluate the impact of soaring oil prices on the U.S. economy, even though financial markets have quickly priced in higher inflation expectations for the coming year. Instead, he focused on signs that price pressures had persisted longer than policymakers had originally hoped, even before the outbreak of the Iran war "We really want to see progress on inflation this year, and it's very important," Powell said at the press conference. "If we don't see that progress, then you won't see rate cuts." The Federal Reserve Chairman made these remarks after deciding to keep interest rates unchanged at two consecutive meetings. This statement reinforces the view that, due to consistently uncooperative consumer price data, the Federal Reserve is still quite far from resuming a series of rate cuts that began at the end of 2025. However, Chairman Powell's firm stance on maintaining higher neutral rates is likely to further anger U.S. President Donald Trump. Just on Wednesday morning local time, Trump once again urged the Federal Reserve to cut rates. **The Federal Reserve's decision to stay put is a mistake—this economist says** The macroeconomist pointed out that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has already reached near the Federal Reserve's long-term target level of 2%, and he believes that the CPI is a more suitable measure for the Federal Reserve's policymakers than the core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (core PCE) that the Federal Reserve prefers. Bjegovic believes that the Federal Reserve's decision to remain inactive is a policy error, primarily because his policy function is completely inconsistent with mainstream market expectations: he places greater emphasis on the deterioration of the labor market and "real interest rates still being too tight," rather than continuing to prioritize inflation risks. In his research report, Bjegovic pointed out that what is even more concerning is that the U.S. economy is losing real jobs every month. The data cited by this economist shows that the unemployment rate has significantly increased over the past 10 months; after adjusting for the decline in labor participation rate, Bjegovic's exclusive calculations indicate that the unemployment rate rose from 4.2% in April 2025 to 5.4% in February 2026, an increase of 1.2 percentage points. During this period, the Federal Reserve only lowered the benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points to 3.6%, which economist Bjegovic described as "still in a very obvious restrictive range." As U.S. non-farm employment growth recently turned negative and the unemployment rate sharply increased, Bjegovic warned that, amid soaring energy prices triggered by war exacerbating market stagflation concerns and further complicating the global central bank interest rate outlook, the economy may already be in a substantial recession process, while the Federal Reserve remains focused on long-term price stickiness risks related to inflation. In his view, the U.S. falling into negative job growth and rapidly rising unemployment rates is already sufficient to signal recession risks. If the central bank continues to delay rate cuts due to oil prices and stagflation concerns, it will only push the labor market into a worse situation. Notably, on social media, some strategists cited a recent major release from Citrini Research titled "2028 AI Apocalypse Prophecy"—a comprehensive vision of a dystopian AI future shaped by artificial intelligence—to support Bjegovic's position. Citrini predicts that in 2028, despite global AI productivity exceeding expectations, the complete disruption of white-collar jobs will lead to a "global economic plague," triggering panic in global financial markets Citrini Research's latest proposed mechanism chain of the "AI Prosperity Crisis" is: AI agent-based intelligent agents drive the replacement of white-collar jobs, leading to a decline in wages and purchasing power, ultimately resulting in the emergence of "Ghost GDP," characterized by "strong productivity but stagnant money flow." Under this "dystopian" mechanism, the consumption-driven economy of human society, which has long been highlighted in the text as having a high consumption ratio, is eroded, leading to negative feedback for risk assets like stocks at high levels, and even causing unemployment rates to surge into double digits, ultimately resulting in a significant pullback in global stock markets from their peaks in a "post hoc" disaster narrative. Citrini Research has effectively cut the linear story of "AI = productivity/profitability uptrend" into a two-track conflict of "market prosperity vs. real economic weakness." This economist describes this as the latest example of a series of monetary policy missteps; Bjegovic stated that after the Federal Reserve maintained excessively loose monetary policy in 2020 and 2021, it implemented aggressive interest rate hikes in 2022 and 2023 to salvage the overly loose policy, and the view that "inflation is only temporary" has significantly damaged the credibility of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. Bjegovic warns that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy errors could further worsen the already weak conditions of the U.S. non-farm labor market. Overall, Bjegovic's latest judgment is essentially a dovish and even contrarian minority position; he believes that the real policy error currently is the insufficiently rapid policy response to the economic growth and employment crisis. In contrast, mainstream Wall Street institutions and Federal Reserve officials believe that rashly cutting interest rates in the context of inflation being above target for five consecutive years, a new round of wars in the Middle East, and the risk of significant oil price increases is even more dangerous ### 相关股票 - [Pacer Cash COWZ 100-Nasdaq100RotatorETF (QQWZ.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/QQWZ.US.md) - [Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/XLF.US.md) - [NASDAQ Composite Index (.IXIC.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/.IXIC.US.md) - [Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/QQQ.US.md) - [Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/QQQM.US.md) - [S&P 500 (.SPX.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/.SPX.US.md) - [Proshares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQ.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/TQQQ.US.md) - [Fidelity Nasdaq Composite Index ETF (ONEQ.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/ONEQ.US.md) - [Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/.DJI.US.md) - [ISHRS Us Brokers & Sec Exchg (IAI.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/IAI.US.md) - [VG Financial (VFH.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/VFH.US.md) - [NASDAQ-100 (.NDX.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/.NDX.US.md) - [First Trust NASDAQ-100 Equal Weighted (QQEW.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/QQEW.US.md) - [Fidelity MSCI Financials Index (FNCL.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/FNCL.US.md) ## 相关资讯与研究 - [TREASURIES-US yields climb as Fed keeps rates steady, upgrades growth outlook](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279659487.md) - [TREASURIES-Yields mixed as PCE eases fears but oil keeps markets cautious](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279081861.md) - [US retail sales to grow at faster rate in 2026, NRF says](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279653003.md) - [TABLE-Dallas Fed January trimmed mean PCE price index +2.7%](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279068541.md) - [TREASURIES-Yields slip as inflation data fuels September rate-cut hopes](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279061247.md)