Federal Reserve officials at their November 1 meeting were agreed on a strategy to “proceed carefully” on future interest-rate moves and base any further tightening on progress toward their inflation goal.
“All participants agreed that the committee was in a position to proceed carefully and that policy decisions at every meeting would continue to be based on the totality of incoming information,” according to minutes of the November 1 Federal Open Market Committee meeting released today, Tuesday, November 21.
At the meeting the Fed held its benchmark lending rate in a range of 5.25% to 5.5% for the second straight meeting.
The minutes show the committee put an emphasis on how higher interest rates were starting to squeeze households and businesses. Staff comments highlighted tighter lending standards across all consumer loan categories in the third quarter and rising delinquency rates.
“Participants noted that inflation had moderated over the past year but stressed that current inflation remained unacceptably high and well above the committee’s longer-run goal of 2%,” according to the minutes. “They also stressed that further evidence would be required for them to be confident that inflation was clearly on a path to the committee’s 2% objective.”
In September, Fed officials forecast that the policy rate would rise another quarter point by the end of the year.
The November meeting tied Powell’s record of 11 straight meetings without a dissent.
GDP rose at an annualized rate of 4.9% in the third quarter, the fastest pace in almost two years. The core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 3.7% for the year ending September.
Today, November 1, the yield on the 10-year Treasury closed at 4.41%, down 1 basis point.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.20%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.18%. The NASDAQ Composite lost 0.59% and the NASDAQ 100 lost 0.58%. The small-cap Russell 2000 gave up 1.2%. The CBEO S&P 500 Volatility Index 9vix0 dropped another 0.97% to 13.28.
