The American central bank, the Fed, could begin to lower its rates during the summer, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said Thursday during a conference.
If things go as planned, I expect us to start cutting rates this summer, said Raphael Bostic, who this year has rotating voting rights on the Fed’s monetary policy committee, the FOMC. .
We’ll have to see what happens over the next few months. This will really determine if this anticipation (…) is appropriate or if I should bring it forward or push it back, if things evolve differently, added Mr. Bostic, during a conference at the Atlanta Fed.
The Fed, after raising its rates since March 2022 to 5.25%-5.50%, is now considering lowering them, in view of the decreasing inflation curve.
But several officials warned that they preferred to wait several months to be certain that inflation was not likely to rebound.
These successive comments had disillusioned the markets, which were dreaming of a first decline from the next Fed meeting on March 19 and 20. Now, they are mainly counting on the meeting in mid-June, according to CME Group’s estimate.
The next meeting will be held at the end of July.
January data on the inflation measure favored by the Fed and which it wants to bring back to 2%, the PCE index, were published Thursday and showed a decline over one year, 2.4% against 2.6% in December, as expected. But over one month, it accelerated, 0.3% compared to 0.1%.