The Federal Reserve is in no rush to cut interest rates, its chairman has said.
‘We don’t need to be in a hurry to cut,’ Jerome Powell said yesterday after the US inflation rate climbed last month.
Powell reiterated that it would not be apt to cut the bank’s 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent target range until there was confidence that inflation is on track to fall to a 2 per cent goal.
It rose to 2.5 per cent in February, according to the metric that the Fed uses for its target. This was up from 2.4 per cent the month before – but was not a surprise.
‘It’s good to see something coming in in line with expectations,’ Powell said.
Cautious: Jerome Powell said it would not be apt to cut the bank’s 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent target range until there was confidence that inflation is on track to fall to a 2 per cent goal
This echoed similar comments from a top Bank of England official who this week warned interest rate cuts in the UK should still be ‘a long way off’.
Interest rates here have been hiked to 5.25 per cent as central bankers battled inflation.
