Fed Shifts Into Neutral
For a fourth consecutive meeting, the US Federal Reserve’s policy committee held benchmark borrowing costs at a 23-year high, and signalled a desire to keep rates at prevailing levels for now. In a distinctly non-committal statement, the Federal Open Market Committee said it “judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are moving into better balance,” but avoided telegraphing imminent cuts, warning that it “does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent”. Language that previously referred to the possibility...