Federal Reserve maintains interest rates, details outlook

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday said that the Federal Open Market Committee believed the U.S. economy has been experiencing solid growth in recent months. On Wednesday, the FOMC decided to maintain its interest rates at roughly 5.25 to 5.5 percent.

Will the Fed lower interest rates anytime soon? Powell indicated the Fed would keep its interest rates steady for the foreseeable future but that it could begin lowering them later in the year. He added that they likely won’t be lowered during the Fed’s next meeting in March. Powell said Fed officials would need more evidence that inflation was sustaining its downward trend, even though inflation has persistently decreased in the United States since the summer of 2022.

Dig deeper: Listen to Nick Eicher and David Bahnsen’s discussion on The World and Everything in It podcast about how the economy has returned to pre-pandemic growth.