New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley is the latest in a string of Fed officials telling the industry to expect a rate hike soon.
According to an article in Reuters by Lindsay Dunsmuir and Richard Leong, Dudley's comments reinforced the drum beat from within the Fed in recent days that rate increases are coming soon.
From the article:
"We are on track to satisfy a lot of the conditions" for a rate increase, Dudley said. He added, though, that a key factor arguing for the Fed biding its time a little was the potential for market turmoil around Britain’s vote in late June about whether to leave the European Union.
"If I am convinced that my own forecast is sort of on track, then I think a tightening in the summer, the June-July time frame is a reasonable expectation," said Dudley, a permanent voting member of the Fed's rate-setting committee.
The FOMC is scheduled to meet in mid June and late July.
As predicted, the Federal Open Market Committee elected in its last meeting to hold steady and not increase federal funds rate.
The current rate is set at between 0.25% and 0.5%, and will remain so, until at least the FOMC’s next meeting in June.
However, once the FOMC released its meeting minutes, skeptical investors were sent a sharp warning that an interest-rate increase is still in play for June’s policy meeting if the economy keeps improving.
From an article in The Wall Street Journal by Kate Davidson and Jon Hilsenrath reported on Wednesday:
Until a few days ago, traders in futures markets saw almost no possibility the Fed would move short-term interest rates up at midyear. However, a batch of strong economic data, recent comments by Fed officials and a new release by the central bank on the deliberations at its last policy meeting have changed that perception.
