- Greene: continue to think we should proactively lean against the risk of second-round inflation effects
- The risk of second-round effects is greater than we previously thought
- Wage disinflation looks to have stalled at levels above those consistent with 2% inflation
Megan Greene is sticking to her guns and the message is only getting sharper. Her latest: wage disinflation has stalled at levels inconsistent with 2% inflation, the risk of second-round effects is greater than previously thought, and the BoE should continue to proactively lean against them.
That’s three for three on the hawkish checklist, and nothing we haven’t heard from her before — she’s was one of the three September dissenters voting for a hike to 4%, she warned last week that waiting for second-round effects to show up means acting too late, and she flagged 3.5% pay settlements as a problem on October 8. The November meeting is already priced at 96.7% for a 25 bps hike, so Greene isn’t moving the needle on her own anymore but this may also be a clue that 4.00% won’t be enough, nor will be the 5.00% priced in for late 2027.
What strikes me lately is that the IMF meetings produced a noticeable hawkish pivot across the board — officials who had been content to let disinflation run its course came out of Thailand sounding considerably less patient. Supply shocks, sticky services inflation, and wage-setting behavior that refuses to normalize are showing up in speeches from multiple central banks. Greene’s framing — that the asymmetry favors acting early because you can always reverse — is the argument winning the room right now.
For sterling, this isn’t a fresh catalyst. The November hike is baked in and Greene is a known quantity but cable is strong today up 71 pips to 1.3373. What worries me is that the Fed hasn’t made the same incrementally hawkish shift since the meeting and that it might show up as a surprise on October 28.
This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.