The state of the US economy divided members of the Federal Reserve at their April meeting but they generally agreed that June would be too early to start raising interest rates for the first time since the recession.
According to the minutes of the Federal Open Markets Committee’s (FOMC) April 28-29 meeting, committee members disagreed about the economic slowdown that followed a particularly harsh winter in the US.
While “a few” Fed officials believed that the US economy would be ready to raise rates in June, they were outnumbered by “many” Fed officials who viewed it as “unlikely” that the economic data would be strong enough to justify a hike next month.
The Fed has kept its key rate near zero since December 2008. “A few anticipated that the information that would accrue by the time of the June meeting would likely indicate sufficient improvement in the economic outlook to lead the Committee to judge that its conditions for beginning policy firming had been met,” the meeting minutes said.
“Many participants, however, thought it unlikely that the data available in June would provide sufficient confirmation that the conditions for raising the target range for the federal funds rate had been satisfied, although they generally did not rule out this possibility.”
