In a previous FRED blog post, we discussed the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) released by the FOMC this past September. In this post, we again use ALFRED to compare the latest projections released in December 2025 with several of the recent projections for the unemployment rate, core PCEPI inflation, real GDP growth, and the federal funds rate. Note that these projections represent neither a committee plan nor a decision on future policy. Our first ALFRED graph, above, shows the unemployment rate projections for the fourth ...

The highly anticipated Federal Reserve meeting in December delivered a 25-basis-point rate cut, fully in line with expectations. Yet, as is often the case, the real signal came not from the cut itself but from what the Fed chose to say afterwards. The message from the post-meeting commentary was clear: the easing path ahead will be slow, conditional, and data-dependent. The Fed now anticipates only one further cut in 2026 and one in 2027, effectively signalling that policymakers are not returning to easy money, but are instead ...

From an investment perspective, I have seldom been one to care much about time sensitivity. During earnings season, I often skim-read the announcements the day they occur and circle back for a closer examination days, sometimes weeks, later. Moreover, the market's open hours no longer coincide with the central part of my day. Thus, being a little more disconnected doesn’t hurt. In Q1 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, the Federal Reserve reacted quickly by lowering borrowing costs and stimulating an economy that risked grinding to ...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell downplayed dissenting votes against Wednesday’s decision to lower interest rates again, but a slew of finer details from the meeting revealed just how divided the central bank has become. Powell pushed through the quarter percentage point cut not only over the objection of a few voters. A much larger group of regional Fed bank presidents who participated in the debate but weren’t among this year’s voting roster also signaled they opposed the cut. The fractures could foreshadow what’s to come in ...

The Federal Reserve delivered a widely expected 25-basis-point (bp) rate cut in December, then signaled a more data-dependent path ahead. Barring an economic shock, we probably won’t see another rate cut until the second half of next year. In the weeks since the previous meeting in October, several Fed officials had expressed discomfort with further rate cuts. Indeed, two officials dissented outright at this meeting by voting to hold the rate steady (and one official voted to cut 50 bps). Four officials used the new economic ...

As widely expected, the FOMC made a 25 bps cut to the target range for the federal funds rate to 3.50-3.75% from 3.75-4.00%. As we suggested, there were dissents in opposite directions: Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed president Jeffrey Schmid did not want to cut and Trump’s quartermaster Stephen Miran wanted to cut by 50 bps. Note that Schmid and Miran made the same dissents at the previous meeting in October. The dot plot actually showed that 6 participants disagreed with today’s cut, but not all ...

Happy Holidays. The FOMC wants to wish you a very merry year-end. They pulled off a dual rally in bonds and equities by putting significantly more balance sheet in everyone's stockings paired with a rate cut and unchanged projections for modest further easing. That offset the fact that Chair Powell conditionally leaned toward taking a breather on further policy rate adjustments in favour of seeing how the economy performs after 175bps of cumulative cuts from the 5.5% peak last year and 75bps since September. Conditional, that is, ...