The Federal Open Market Committee once again moved to keep its rates steady during its meeting on Jan. 31. The decision to keep the target federal funds rate at a range of 5.25 percent to 5.5 percent comes as Fed chair Jerome Powell stressed the importance of continued progress toward a 2 percent inflation target.
Powell remarked, “We’re looking for greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably down to two percent. Implicitly, we do have confidence and [that confidence] has been increasing, but we want to get greater confidence.”
“What do we want to see?” he asked. “We want to see more good data. It’s not that we’re looking for better data, but we’re looking for continuation of the good data that we’ve been seeing.”
Oxford Economics (OE) continues to forecast that this cycle’s first rate cut will occur in May, and noted in a rapid reaction comment, “It doesn’t appear the Fed is buying into the idea of insurance cuts to incre