U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kevin Mohatt | Reuters<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Federal Reserve projected lowering interest rates by another half point before the end of 2024, and the central bank has two more policy meetings to do so.<\/p>\n
The so-called dot plot indicated that 19 FOMC members, both voters and nonvoters, see the benchmark fed funds rate at 4.4% by the end of this year, equivalent to a target range of 4.25% to 4.5%. The Fed’s two remaining meetings for the year are scheduled for Nov. 6-7 and Dec.17-18.<\/p>\n
Through 2025, the central bank forecasts interest rates landing at 3.4%, indicating another full percentage point in cuts. Through 2026, rates are expected to fall to 2.9% with another half-point reduction.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing in the SEP (Summary of Economic Projections) that suggests the committee is in a rush to get this done,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a press conference. “This process evolves over time.”<\/p>\n
The central bank lowered the federal funds rate to a range between 4.75%-5%<\/a> on Wednesday, its first rate cut since the early days of the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n Here are the Fed’s latest targets:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance,”\u00a0the post-meeting statement said<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Fed officials hiked their expected unemployment rate this year to 4.4%, from the 4% projection at the last update in June.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, they lowered the inflation outlook to 2.3% from 2.6% previous. On core inflation, the committee took down its projection to 2.6%, a 0.2 percentage point reduction from June.<\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Source: www.cnbc.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2024.\u00a0 Kevin Mohatt | Reuters The Federal Reserve projected lowering interest rates by another half point before the end of 2024, and the central bank…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance"],"yoast_head":"\n