A stronger-than-expected jobs report for the month of September has some increasing the odds that the Federal Reserve won’t cut interest rates next month.
But Kevin Hassett, director of the president’s National Economic Council, said that would be a “very bad time” for the central bank to pause cutting because the government shutdown dented economic growth in the fourth quarter.
Hassett said he expects the government shutdown will knock 1.5 percentage points off GDP in the fourth quarter. At the same time, he pointed to the Consumer Price Index for September that showed inflation came in bet