{"id":209791,"date":"2025-10-08T19:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T19:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/209791\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T19:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T19:16:08","slug":"fed-officials-were-cautious-about-inflation-as-they-agreed-rate-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/209791\/","title":{"rendered":"Fed officials were cautious about inflation as they agreed rate cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n

Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n

Some of the Federal Reserve\u2019s top officials would have preferred to keep borrowing costs on hold last month, highlighting concerns among policymakers that elevated inflation still poses a threat to the US economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee cut borrowing costs for the first time this year in September, lowering the benchmark federal funds target range<\/a> by a quarter-point to 4-4.25 per cent amid signs of a weakening jobs market.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the minutes of the mid-September vote showed that \u201ca few\u201d of the FOMC<\/a> would have supported a decision to keep borrowing costs unchanged as inflation was in danger of remaining above the central bank\u2019s goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Progress towards the 2 per cent goal \u201chad\u00a0stalled this year as inflation readings increased\u201d, the minutes said, adding that a few members had \u201cexpressed concern that longer-term inflation expectations may rise if inflation does not return to its objective in a timely manner\u201d.<\/p>\n

The two-year Treasury yield, which moves with interest rate expectations, ticked higher on the release of the minutes, rising 0.03 percentage points to 3.59 per cent on Wednesday afternoon. <\/p>\n

The 12 voting members of the FOMC backed the cut by 11-1, with Stephen Miran, an ally of President Donald Trump and economic adviser who joined the Fed just before the meeting, supporting a bigger half-point move. <\/p>\n

The committee contains a total of 19 members, with seven of the 12 regional presidents unable to vote at any one time. <\/p>\n

Projections released at the time of the meeting showed a slim majority of the committee backed making at least two quarter-point cuts later this year. <\/p>\n

Miran was alone in projecting much steeper cuts from the central bank, while one member of the committee thought borrowing costs should end the year a quarter-point higher than they are now. <\/p>\n

The decision to cut rates came after months from pressure from Trump, who had berated Fed chair Jay Powell as a \u201cnumbskull\u201d who was \u201ctoo late\u201d to loosen monetary policy. <\/p>\n

Trump has sought to increase his influence over the central bank, although his efforts to immediately sack governor Lisa Cook were stalled by a ruling from the Supreme Court last month.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Kate Duguid in New York<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-209791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}