From bankrate.com
The Federal Reserve kept interest rates at a 23-year high and signaled no immediate plans to cut interest rates, suggesting that officials are having to recalibrate monetary policy as inflation has stayed stubbornly higher than expected.
For nine months now, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has kept its key benchmark federal funds rate in a target range of 5.25-5.5 percent, the highest since 2001. The latest decision matters for consumers because it means the pricey financing rates they’re paying — on everything from credit cards and auto loans to mortgage rates and home equity loans — are going to keep sticking around.
“In recent months, there has been a lack of further progress toward the committee’s 2 percent inflation objective,” officials wrote in their post-meeting statement. “The committee judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals have moved toward better balance over the past year.”
To be sure, the pain of higher interest rates was never expected to disappear this year, though U.S. central bankers hoped that they might be able to take some of the edge away. At the end of 2023, Fed officials faced an economically golden scenario: slowing inflation and a resilient job market. They signaled plans to cut interest rates three times in 2024 and stayed hopeful about it even as inflation flashed warning signs of remaining firm.
Continue read to bankrate.com