The Federal Reserve has released the minutes from its 2-day meeting January 24-25, 2012.
The Fed Minutes is a summary of the conversations and debates that shape our nation’s monetary policy. It receives less attention than the Fed’s more well-known, post-meeting press release, but the Fed Minutes is every bit as important.
To rate shoppers in Sacramento , for example, the Fed Minutes can give clues about whether mortgage rates will generally rise or fall in the coming months. Continue reading →
Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged within its current target range of 0.000-0.250 percent. To add impact, the Fed has indicated that they will “likely not raise interest rates until at least late 2014”.
The Fed Funds Rate has been near zero percent since December 2008. To be fair, on Jan 13th we saw rates at their lowest mark in over a year, only to see them deteriorate over the last week and a half. With the Fed news today, we are seeing a marked improvement – but not to the levels we saw January 13th.
For the third consecutive month, the Fed Funds Rate vote was nearly unanimous. Just one FOMC member dissented in the 9-1 vote, objecting only to the language used in the Fed’s official statement.