by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
What Powell Said about rate hikes, no rate cuts, rate cuts, and the QT slowdown while getting rid of MBS entirely.
“Hike” and “rate hike” were mentioned 8 times by reporters and by Powell during the FOMC’s post-meeting press conference today. Those terms weren’t mentioned at all in the press conferences during Rate-Cut Mania, which were all about “rate cuts,” how many and when.
Powell was obviously unenthusiastic about rate hikes, and thought it “unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike” – “our policy focus is really how long to keep policy restrictive,” he said. But rate hikes weren’t even on the table before, so that alone was a big shift, from a bunch of rate cuts to having to deal with the possibility of a rate hike. One step at a time.