Interest rates

Ellis Phifer, managing director and senior strategist in the fixed income research department at Raymond James, talks with Chip Barnett about the state of the bond markets. (Taped Feb. 16; 15 minutes)

The Federal Reserve's quantitative-tightening program risks being propelled toward an early end as U.S. politicians bicker in Washington over raising the national debt limit, according to some economists and bond market participants.

The JPMorgan Chase CEO said the Federal Reserve's rate hikes might need to go beyond what's currently expected, but he's in favor of a pause to see the full impact of last year's increases.

The Federal Reserve will slow the pace of interest-rate increases next month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powel suggested Wednesday, while stressing borrowing costs will need to keep rising.

North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry — who's in line to lead the House Financial Services Committee after the GOP won control of the chamber in the midterm elections — has called for the Fed to stay focused on controlling inflation. Democrats, who retained the Senate, have begun to voice concerns that higher borrowing costs will hurt jobs and potentially cause a recession.

Massive mutual fund selloffs this year have returned the market to a pre-1976 investor landscape, when portfolios focused on individual demand, said MMA's Tom Doe.

Variable-rate debt, tender option bonds and even prepaid gas bonds may stage a comeback in the current market, panelists at a GFOA conference said.

A shift is underway at the Federal Reserve in how to describe neutral — the interest rate level that neither stimulates nor restrains growth — as it debates how much higher to hike.

The Federal Reserve's balance-sheet unwind is set to ramp up this week, which means the central bank will finally begin unloading the Treasury bills it started amassing almost three years ago.

Directors at two of the Federal Reserve's 12 regional branches favored a 100-basis-point increase in the discount rate in July, minutes of discount-rate meetings show.