A discussion about raising interest rates is still quite a ways off as the Federal Reserve begins debating tapering its bond-buying program, New York Fed President John Williams said. “That’s still way off in the future,” Williams said of rate hikes during a Bloomberg Television interview on Tuesday. “Right now, really, I think the attention is on the taper.” The U.S. central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, on which Williams sits, is debating when it will be appropriate to begin scaling back the bond-buying program it put in place last year at the outset of the pandemic. … At the conclusion of a two-day policy meeting on June 16, the FOMC published updated quarterly projections showing the majority of policy makers expected it would be appropriate to begin raising the central bank’s benchmark federal funds rate from its current near-zero level sometime in 2023. Seven of 18 on the committee expected it would be appropriate to begin raising the rate as soon as next year.
Source: The Bond Buyer
