Business
Video: Fed Wants More ‘Good Data’ Before Cutting Interest Rates, Powell Says
new video loaded: Fed Wants More ‘Good Data’ Before Cutting Interest Rates, Powell Says
transcript
transcript
Fed Wants More ‘Good Data’ Before Cutting Interest Rates, Powell Says
After the Federal Reserve announced that interest rates would remain unchanged, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed’s chair, signaled that cuts could come this year — though not by the central bank’s next meeting.
-
The committee decided at today’s meeting to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 5.25 to 5.5 percent and to continue the process of significantly reducing our securities holdings. We believe that our policy rate is likely at its peak for this tightening cycle, and that, if the economy evolves broadly as expected, it will likely be appropriate to begin dialing back policy restraint at some point this year. The committee does not expect that it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent. We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting. We’re looking for greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably down to 2 percent. Implicitly, we do have confidence and has been increasing, but we want to get greater confidence. What do we want to see? We want to see more good data. It’s not that we’re looking for better data. We’re looking at continuation of the good data that we’ve been seeing.
Recent episodes in Business