The US Federal Reserve is likely to make one or two more rate cuts this year as it recalibrates policy to focus on the labor market, a senior bank official said on Wednesday.
Fed policymakers voted 11-to-1 in favor of cutting the bank’s key lending rate by half a percentage point last month, bringing the bank’s key lending rate down from a 23-year high, with Fed Governor Michelle Bowman the only voting member of the committee to publicly back a smaller cut.
Speaking in the US state of Idaho on Wednesday, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said she had backed a larger cut last month to “recalibrate” monetary policy.
Photo:Reuters
Daly was among the vast majority of members on the Fed’s rate-setting committee to vote for the bigger rate cut, which lowered the US central bank’s key lending rate to between 4.75 and 5 percent.
“We were patient. We saw that the things we were marching towards have started to evolve,” she said, adding “we adjust 50 basis points to get policy right-sized for the economy we have, and the one we expect to evolve going forward.”
Alongside the large cut, policymakers published updated economic forecasts in which they penciled in an additional 50 basis points of cuts over the two remaining meetings this year.
“I think that two more cuts this year, or one more cut this year, really spans the range of what is likely in my mind, given my projection for the economy,” Daly said.
However, she cautioned that the Fed was “data-dependent,” and policy would continue to be guided by the incoming data on inflation and the health of the labor market.
Futures traders see a roughly 80 percent chance that the Fed would move ahead with a 25 basis point cut at its next meeting early next month, according to CME Group data.
Separately, US consumer inflation cooled last month — though slightly less than expected — according to government data published yesterday, providing further evidence that price pressures are easing ahead of next month's US presidential election.
The consumer price index (CPI) slowed to 2.4 percent last month from a year ago, down from 2.5 percent in August, the US Department of Labor said in a statement.
This was slightly above the median forecast of economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
There was also some cause for concern for the Fed as it looks to cut interest rates: a measure of inflation that strips out volatile food and energy costs rose slightly to 3.3 percent, up from 3.2 percent in August, buoyed by a jump in the transportation services index last month.
Monthly headline inflation rose by 0.2 percent, while core inflation also exceeded forecasts to increase by 0.3 percent.
Despite the "slight upward surprise relative to what we're expecting," the inflation picture isn't all bad, Oxford Economics' deputy chief US economist Michael Pearce told AFP.
Given "the broader trend in services inflation, I think I'm still confident in the view that that's going to continue to trend lower over the next 12 months," he said.
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