Nearly 74% of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month said the Fed’s next interest-rate increase would come in December. There’s also evidence that threats to USA growth from global instability have eased.
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She played down concerns that the Fed’s easy monetary stance was fueling bubbles in the financial markets and the economy.
PNC estimates that GDP will grow 1.5 percent this year, down from 2.6 percent last year, Faucher said.
“We are very focused, and this will be a particular focus of our supervision going forward over the next year or so”, she said.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 23 points, or 1.1 percent, to 2,163. It said it will continue trying to stimulate the Japanese economy until inflation is higher than 2 percent a year, but it didn’t reduce interest rates any further. Before the rate decision, traders saw about a 58 percent chance of a December rate hike, and were betting on another hike in 2017.
The Federal Reserve held off on a rate hike, but three officials opposed the decision – the most dissents since December 2014.
The Federal Reserve once again pushed back plans to raise interest rates on Wednesday, a widely expected move following a series of mixed economic reports and varied signals from Fed officials.
“The economy has a bit more running room than might have been previously thought”, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said at a news conference.
In the end, the Fed kept its benchmark rate at a historically low 0.4%, where it has stood since officials raised it in December for the first time in almost a decade.
But the language in the post-meeting statement issued by the Fed’s Open Market Committee and the economic projections of the committee’s members pointed in different directions. The central bank noted US economic activity had picked up and job gains were “solid” in recent months. “There were three dissenting officials in the vote, and the case for raising rates has strengthened”.
It added that its rate-setting committee had decided against raising rates “for the time being”, until there was more evidence of progress towards its employment and inflation objectives.
Earlier, the Bank of Japan overhauled its monetary policy to target interest rates. Policy makers on Wednesday scaled back their median projection of the long-term interest rate to 2.9 percent from 3 percent in June.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.70 percent.
The Dow is up 169.90 points, or 0.9 percent.
The Fed’s next policy meeting, November 1-2, is a week before the US presidential election, and action is unlikely then, leaving a mid-December policy meeting as the Fed’s last scheduled chance this year to push rates higher. A year ago, the Fed expected to move rates up four times in 2016, but has held the fed-funds rate steady since December in a range between 0.25% and 0.5%.
Crucially, inflation continued to track below the 2% target as falling energy prices and non-energy imports showed through.
Jeremy Zirin, chief equity strategist at UBS Wealth Management Americas, says the Fed will likely hold off on a rate hike today.
In an interview on CNBC earlier this month, Trump, the Republican nominee for president, said Yellen should be “ashamed” of keeping interest rates low for so long.
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In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline rose 3 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $1.40 a gallon.
