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August 01, 2018 at 03:26 PM
Federal Reserve officials left the benchmark interest rate unchanged while reiterating their plan to gradually lift borrowing costs to keep the economy expanding at a healthy pace.
Economic activity has been “rising at a strong rate,” and the unemployment rate “has stayed low,” the Federal Open Market Committee said Wednesday in a statement released in Washington. “Household spending and business fixed investment have grown strongly.”
The committee said it expects that “further gradual increases in the target range for the federal funds rate will be consistent with sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions, and inflation near the committee’s symmetric 2 percent objective,” repeating language from its June statement.
Stocks and bonds were little changed after the announcement, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index down about 0.2 percent and the 10-year Treasury yield at 2.99 percent.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is trying to nurture the second longest U.S. expansion on record by slowly reducing the amount of support that monetary policy provides to growth. The economy is riding a tailwind from tax cuts and higher federal spending, though a trade war threatens to dent growth.
‘Roughly Balanced’
The committee described risks to the outlook as “roughly balanced,” and restated that “monetary policy remains accommodative” while leaving the target range for its benchmark policy rate at 1.75 percent to 2 percent.
