Abrdn analyst warns of potential policy mistake if Fed does not act quickly on rate easing.

• Kenneth Akintewe, the head of Asian Sovereign Debt at a British fund manager, predicts that the U.S. economy will experience a soft landing, but there is still a possibility of a prolonged slowdown in 2025.
• Should the U.S. Federal Reserve already be easing, given that the economy may be weaker than the headline data suggests, as questioned by Akintewe on CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia"?
• The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, increased by 0.2% in the U.S. last month, as anticipated. This suggests a smaller rate cut may be in order.

Kenneth Akintewe, the head of Asian sovereign debt at a British fund manager, predicts that the U.S. economy will experience a soft landing, but there is still a possibility of a prolonged slowdown in 2025.

On Monday, Akintewe posed the question to CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia": "Is the Fed inadvertently making a policy blunder?"

The U.S. Labor Department reported in August that the U.S. economy created 818,000 fewer jobs than originally reported from April 2023 to March 2024.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the actual job growth for the nonfarm payroll numbers from April 2023 to March of this year was nearly 30% less than the initially reported 2.9 million.

Is the economy weaker than the headline data suggests, and should the Fed ease?

The Fed's policy changes take time to be implemented in the economy, so if the economy is weaker than the headline data suggests, they will need to accumulate a sufficient amount of easing, such as 150 to 200 basis points, which will also take time.

It takes six to eight months to transmit that amount of easing.

If the economy shows signs of weakness in 2025, it may take until the second half of the year to see the effects of any easing, and the results could be quite different.

He also argued that the market is too focused on predicting the size of any possible upcoming cut, and posed the question, "The other question no one seems to ask is, why is the policy rate still at 5.5% when inflation is down to almost 2.5%? Like, do you need a 300 basis point real policy rate in this kind of environment with all the uncertainty that we're facing?"

Last month, the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, increased by 0.2% in the U.S. on Friday, as anticipated.

U.S. rate futures suggest a lower likelihood of a 50 basis-point rate cut in September, according to the data.

The CME Fedwatch Tool indicates that markets anticipate a 70% chance of a 25-basis-point rate cut at the Fed's meeting this month, with the remaining 30% expecting a 50-basis-point reduction.

— CNBC's Jeff Cox contributed to this report.