Kansas City Fed President Esther George expressed her support for pausing rate hikes yesterday. She said inflation pressures did not appear very strong. At the same time, there were concerns on global slowdown. Thus, “let’s step back and see what happens.”
Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said at the coming meetings, Fed “will be finalizing our plans for ending the balance-sheet runoff and completing balance-sheet normalization.” And, Fed will “make these plans and the rationale for them known to the public in a timely way because transparency and accountability are basic tenets of appropriate monetary policymaking.”
Fed Chair Jerome Powell delivered a speech on bank consolidations and rural communities. But he didn’t talk about monetary policy. On the economy, he just said “We don’t feel that the probability of recession is at all elevated.”
