The FOMC next week will almost certainly leave its policy rate unchanged between 5.25% and 5.5% and maintain the pace of quantitative tightening. The hold in the policy rate should be understood as the Federal Reserve again signaling that it considers rates sufficiently restrictive to bring down ... READ MORE >
federal open market committee
Fed signals end of rate hikes and projects cuts in 2024
The Federal Reserve signaled at its meeting on Wednesday that it is done raising its policy rate and is poised to reduce it by 75 basis points next year, with more cuts after that. The Fed also reduced its inflation forecast for next year to 2.8% from 3.3%, and to 2.4% from 2.5% for 2025, which ... READ MORE >
FOMC preview and the logic of Fed rate cuts in 2024
After nearly two years of raising the federal funds rate to restore price stability, the Federal Reserve is poised to all but declare that campaign to be over at its meeting next week. While the Federal Open Market Committee is likely to keep its policy statement largely unchanged, that statement ... READ MORE >
FOMC decision: Extended pause as Fed waits for economy and inflation to ease further
The Federal Reserve maintained its policy rate in a range between 5.25% to 5.5% at its November policy meeting on Wednesday. Given the recent backup in Treasury yields, with the 10-year increasing by 124 basis points from 3.74% on July 19 to 4.98% on Oct. 19, the Fed intends to create policy space to ... READ MORE >
FOMC policy decision: No rate hike as Fed implies soft landing
The Federal Reserve maintained its policy rate in a range between 5.25% and 5.5% on Wednesday while revisions to its Summary of Economic Projections strongly imply that the central bank no longer expects a recession, which it did just six months ago, and is increasingly confident of a soft landing in the ... READ MORE >
FOMC policy decision: The time for an end to rate hikes has arrived
The Federal Open Market Committee increased its policy rate to a range between 5.25% and 5.5% at its meeting on Wednesday. While the September, November and December meetings remain live options for more rate increases, we think that Wednesday’s hike is the final step in a two-year effort to ... READ MORE >
Fed pauses rate hikes while signaling a tightening bias
The Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday kept its policy rate in a range between 5% and 5.25% while signaling that it will most likely hike the federal funds rate by 25 basis points at least twice before the end of the year. This implies a possible policy peak of 5.75% later this year. ... READ MORE >
Job openings exceed 10 million as labor market imbalance widens
Job openings came in stronger than expected for April as the imbalance in the labor market widened, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday The latest data comes at an important juncture, two weeks ahead of the Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated June ... READ MORE >
Fed hikes rate a quarter point while creating framework for a pause
The Federal Reserve increased its policy rate for the tenth consecutive time on Wednesday, pushing the federal funds rate to a range between 5% and 5.25%. The 25 basis-point increase was accompanied by changes in the Federal Open Market Committee’s statement that imply a possible pause at ... READ MORE >
Catch-25: Fed hikes rates amid financial stability risk
Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22” delved into the impossible conditions imposed upon people caught in situations from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. That Catch-22 is an apt description of where the Federal Reserve finds itself as it lifted its ... READ MORE >