Federal Reserve meeting minutes from the June policy gathering is being released on Wednesday to show an active debate among policymakers who still on balance appear inclined to support more action to tame inflation. The meeting minutes arrive after U.S. central bank officials have spent the last three weeks following the June Federal Open Market Committee meeting sketching out their policy outlooks. Key officials like Fed Chair Jerome Powell have pointed to forecasts released at that gathering indicating that a half percentage point’s more tightening this year was very much still in play. The Associated Press has the story:
Some Fed’s wanted to raise rates last month
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP)
Some Federal Reserve officials pushed to raise the Fed’s key interest rate by one-quarter of a percentage point at their meeting last month to fight high inflation, though the central bank ultimately decided to forgo a rate hike.
In a sign of growing division among the policymakers, some officials favored a quarter-point increase or said they “could have supported such a proposal,” according to the minutes of the June 13-14 meeting released Wednesday. In the end, the 11 voting members of the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee agreed unanimously to skip a hike after 10 straight increases. But they signaled that they may raise rates twice more this year, beginning as soon as this month.
In Fed parlance, “some” is less than “most” or “many,” evidence that the support for another rate hike was a minority view. And some who held that view were likely unable to vote at the meeting; the 18 members of the Fed’s policymaking committee vote on a rotating basis.
Though the vote was ultimately unanimous, it is uncommon for the Fed to stipulate in minutes that some officials disagreed with the committee’s decision.
