Washington (AFP)

The annual high mass of central bankers at Jackson Hole in the United States will floor on the "challenges of monetary policy". A topical issue, when the Fed must maneuver between risks of recession and incessant pressures of Donald Trump.

Jerome Powell, the president of the US Central Bank, will deliver a speech Friday at 14:00 GMT to the elders of the central bankers and economists gathered in the prestigious mountain resort of Wyoming. Markets like the President of the United States will analyze any word.

The head of the Fed has not spoken publicly since the rate cut decided on July 31 by the Monetary Committee, the first since the financial crisis in 2008.

During this monetary meeting, whose minutes were published on Wednesday, the US Central Bank estimated that weak global growth and trade tensions could slow down the US economy and wanted to take "insurance" on the future.

In this report of fifteen pages, the Fed mentions 44 times the "risks" that the economy, 32 times "trade" and 14 times "uncertainties", noted Diane Swonk, chief economist for Grant Thornton.

Even if the financial market players are convinced that the Fed will again lower rates at the next meeting on 17 and 18 September, the Monetary Committee has indicated that it wants to keep its "open options" on the evolution of rates.

"It is important to maintain a range of options in setting the level of federal funds rates," notes the report.

Especially since "the nature of the risks (...) and the lack of clarity on their resolution reinforce the need (for the Fed) to remain flexible and focused on economic information," says the report.

- More clarity? -

Investors hope that Jerome Powell will give clues as to what the Fed intends to do.

"We will hopefully have more clarity on future rate cuts when Mr Powell will speak on Friday, but there is little evidence that the Fed wants to resist the markets", which anticipate a fall in interest rates. quarter of a percentage point, says Michael Pearce, economist for Capital Economics.

The Central Bank is also facing relentless pressure from the White House to lower rates, which range from 2% to 2.25%.

President Donald Trump keeps invoking the Fed with almost daily tweets to lower the cost of credit by an entire percentage point.

On Wednesday again, he was impatient with the Federal Reserve, which he believes should "wake up", and against Jerome Powell, compared to an incompetent golf player who "lacks fingering".

Trump does not hide his willingness to lower the dollar, in the wake of a rate cut, to make US products more competitive during the tariff war.

The decline in Fed rates in July, the first in eleven years, is explained by Monetary Committee participants as "a recalibration, a mid-cycle adjustment".

Jerome Powell had said after this decision of the Monetary Committee, which two members had opposed, that the Fed did not engage a priori "not in a long cycle of declines". But he did not exclude that there were others.

© 2019 AFP