The US Federal Reserve raised rates again, but only by a quarter of a percent
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The Federal Reserve System of the USA continued the cycle of raising rates, but again slowed down the pace – after months of increases by 0.5-0.75 percentage points in January, the rate increased by 0.25 percentage points.
It is reported Bloomberg.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that while the Fed has slowed rate hikes, officials expect “several” more interest rate hikes before ending the cycle of monetary policy tightening.
Members of the Federal Open Market Operations Committee (OFAC) unanimously decided to raise the target indicator of the Fed’s base rate by 0.25 percentage points. to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%. The move followed a half-point hike in December and four hard hikes of 0.75 percentage points before that.
“The Committee expects that further increases in the target range will be necessary to determine a monetary policy that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2% over time,” the Fed said in a statement.
At the same time, the rate hike cycle may be coming to an end. The Committee stated that the “duration of the future increase” of rates will depend on a number of factors, in particular – on the general tightening of monetary policy. Previously, he linked the “pace” of future increases to these factors.
In another change from its previous statement, the Fed said inflation “has eased somewhat but remains high,” signaling growing confidence among policymakers that price pressures have peaked.
“Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive stance for some time,” Powell noted, adding that he currently does not expect a rate cut this year.
At the previous meeting in December, 17 of the 19 members of the Committee predicted that the Fed would raise rates to 5% or higher this year, with none of the officials expecting a rate cut.
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