Fed Keeps Interest Rates Unchanged
The Federal Reserve seems to be leaning hard on the mantra: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The central bank yet again opted to keep interest rates steady Wednesday as policymakers wait for economic uncertainty to clear.
At the conclusion of a two-day policy meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee voted to keep its target for the federal-funds rate at 4.25% to 4.50%, as investors expected. Ahead of the decision, the interest-rate futures market had the odds that rates wouldn’t change at 99.9%.
The U.S. economy has been more or less stable since the Fed’s policy meeting in May, with the labor market holding up and inflation cooling a bit. Fed officials have taken that relative calm in the economic fundamentals as a signal that the U.S. economy doesn’t need additional support from monetary policy.