Recent Updates
- US: Chicago Fed Survey of Business Conditions, Survey of Consumer Expectations (Mar)
- Kazakhstan: Export/Import Prices (Feb)
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Economy in Brief
FIBER: Industrial Commodity Prices Improve Modestly
The FIBER Industrial Materials Price Index increased 0.9% during the four weeks ended April 9...
EMU Retail Sales Jump, Regaining Some of the January Drop
February finds EU retail sales and motor vehicle registration rebounding...
U.S. PPI Posts Broad-Based Strength in March
The Producer Price Index for final demand jumped 1.0% (4.2% y/y) during March...
U.S. Wholesale Inventories Post Strong February Gain; Sales Fall
Wholesale inventories increased 0.6% (2.0% y/y) during February...
U.S. Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims Unexpectedly Increase
Initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to 744,000 during the week ended April 3...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
Monetary Policy Blunder: Not Managing Economic & Financial Outcomes Equally
Monetary Policy at a Crossroad: Policymakers Need to Break Promise of Easy Money to Avoid Boom-Bust
State Coincident Indexes in January
Data Surprises, Markets and COVID
by Tom Moeller December 11, 2019
The Federal Reserve kept the target range for the Federal funds rate at 1.50% to 1.75% at today's FOMC meeting. The lack of action was expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey.
Today's action was unanimous amongst FOMC voters.
Comments which accompanied today's action were little changed from earlier meetings, including that the labor market has stayed solid and that economic activity continues to rise at a moderate rate. The pace of consumer spending continues strong but business investment and exports remain weak. The Fed remarked again that international developments could play a role in determining future action.
Accompanying today's meeting were scattered revisions to economic estimates. The real GDP growth estimates were unchanged at 2.2% in 2019, 2.0% in 2020, 1.9% in 2021 and 1.8% in 2022. Core PCE price inflation should come in this year at 1.6% (revised from 1.8%), then 1.9%, 2.0% and 2.0% in the following three years, respectively. The civilian unemployment rate estimate of 3.6% this year was reduced from 3.7% and will be followed by 3.5% (revised from 3.7%) in 2020, 3.6% in 2021 (revised from 3.8%) then 3.7% in 2022 (revised from 3.9%).
The press release for today's meeting can be found here.
Current | Last | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Federal Funds Rate Target | 1.50%-1.75% | 1.50%-1.75% | 1.82% | 1.00% | 0.40% | 0.13 |