(Washington) The American Federal Reserve, 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 we will start cutting rates this summer,” said Raphael Bostic, who has a rotating vote on the Fed’s monetary policy committee this year. , the FOMC.
“We will have to see what happens over the next few months. This will really determine whether 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 having raised 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 reduction at the next Fed meeting, on March 19 and 20. From now on, 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 Fed’s preferred measure of inflation that it wants to bring down to 2%, the PCE index, was released Thursday and showed a decline over one year, to 2.4% from 2. 6% in December, as expected. But over one month, it accelerated, to 0.3% compared to 0.1%.