US economy doesn’t need any rate cuts - investor Howard Marks

The U.S. economy doesn’t need any rate cuts, billionaire investor and Oaktree Capital’s co-chairman Howard Marks told CNBC, predicting there won’t be a recession for another two years.

“If your goal is to make sure we don’t have a recession this year, next year ... (then) maybe you want to cut rates,” Marks told.

But the U.S. economy is doing “pretty well,” Marks said, with sources of strength which could be mostly attributed to the American consumer.

When asked if a recession was about to his the U.S., he replied: “It doesn’t feel to me like a recession is imminent. I don’t think we’re going to go 5 years without it, so some time two years from now — something like that.”

Central banks usually cut rates to get the economy going, he said, citing that the Fed’s rate cuts 10 years ago helped stall global financial crisis. “Ten years later, do you want to cut rates to extend an economic expansion which is the longest in history?” he asked. “I question whether that’s a legitimate goal.”

But the work of preventing the next recession from happening isn’t the Fed’s job, Marks said. Traditionally, the Fed’s role was to control inflation, and in the past few decades, it was to support growth so that jobs would be created, he pointed out.