WASHINGTON — Most Federal Reserve policymakers supported the need for an interest rate cut in September, minutes of the central bank’s last policy meeting showed, but they remain increasingly divided on the path ahead for monetary policy.
“Most participants believed that a reduction of 25 basis points in the target range for the federal funds rate would be appropriate,” the Fed said in the minutes. Several policymakers noted that statistical models suggested the likelihood of a recession over the medium term had increased in recent months and a number warned that the labour market coming into 2019 may have been less strong than previously thought, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary revisions.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and some other policymakers are in the camp that view rate cuts that have occurred as necessary insurance in order to keep the longest U.S. economic expansion on record going. The Fed has been near-continuously pilloried in recent months by President Donald Trump who called them “boneheads” ahead of the September meeting for not cutting interest rates more. On Wednesday Trump criticized the central bank again. “The USA is doing great despite the Fed!” he tweeted.