INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
how long its policy pause would last, or how many more interest-rate increases, if any, were in the offing.
This week, as disappointing US
retail sales and industrial production data raised the prospect that the US economy will slow more quickly than expected, three Fed
policymakers gave an answer: one rate hike, or perhaps none at all.
It is not clear how widely those views are shared among all 17 Fed
Several other policymakers speaking this week were careful not to say how long they expected their own patience on rates to last
The first broad read of their views will come in March, when the Fed next releases forecasts for the economy and rates.
But the projections
delivered this week - for one rate hike this year from both Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic and Philadelphia Fed
President Patrick Harker; and for perhaps none at all, from San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly - suggest that several at the US central
In December, when the Fed raised interest rates a fourth time that year, most Fed policymakers penciled in two more rate hikes for this
repeated on Friday that he is in no rush to raise rates
was in 2018, when it was propped up by government spending and tax cuts whose impact the central bank expects to wane.
But in recent months
the expectation of how fast and deep that slowdown might become has been clouded by slower-than- anticipated growth overseas, and financial
market turbulence in the United States that can to some degree spill over into how consumers spend and businesses invest and hire.
Fed
before changing rate policy.
A weak retail sales report for December released this week was followed on Friday by a report showing
manufacturing production posted its biggest decline in eight months in January.
Bostic said that has not yet changed his outlook, or his
