Fed releases July meeting minutes, signals possible rate cut this year

At 1 a.m. on Thursday, August 22 (Vietnam time), the US Federal Reserve (Fed) released the minutes of its July meeting. Accordingly, officials have moved closer to a long-awaited rate cut; at the same time, the possibility of a rate cut in September is probably increasing.

"The majority" of officials attending the July 30-31 meeting found that if the data continues to progress as expected, the possibility of easing policy at the next meeting is appropriate, the minutes stated.

In addition, the meeting minutes also summarized the outstanding issues. While all the rate-setting officials on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) agreed to leave the benchmark rate unchanged at its July meeting, some officials wanted to ease immediately rather than wait until September.

These officials reportedly saw recent inflation and rising unemployment as enough to justify a 25 basis point cut at the July meeting. However, given the Fed’s wording, that number was probably relatively small.

Importantly, the minutes indicated that officials were confident about the direction of inflation and were prepared to ease policy if data continued to improve.