Rate update: Watch out for tax reform

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By G. Steven Bray

It’s Thanksgiving week, and bond markets are pretty quiet. Rates are bouncing around in a very narrow range as they’re apt to do when everyone is full of turkey. However, that quiet may belie building pressure to move interest rates.

The biggest motivator of movement is the tax reform plan. As it sits now, markets seem cautiously optimistic that something will come of Congressional action. That optimism seems to have placed a floor under rates, but the caution is keeping them from moving much higher.

In simple terms, a large part of the tax plan is tax cuts. Tax cuts typically boost economic growth. Economic growth creates competition for goods (such as employees and raw materials), leading to higher prices for those goods. Higher prices, aka inflation, are the enemy of low interest rates.

At least that’s the way it seemed to work in the past. The world seems awash now in many raw materials, so higher growth might have a minimal impact on their prices. And the Philips Curve, which basically says low US unemployment should lead to higher wages, seems to have less relevance due in part to globalization.

That said, if the Senate next week seems to be coalescing around a tax plan, any tax plan, I expect rates will edge up a bit.

I wish you and your family a blessed Thanksgiving.