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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ild who wrote (27059)	2/23/2005 2:03:42 PM
From: ild	Respond to of 110194

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Federal Reserve policymakers think their key short-term interest rate remains too low despite six increases over the last eight months, but say additional rate increases will now depend on "incoming data." At their last meeting on Feb. 1 and Feb. 2, members of the Federal Open Market Committee opted to raise the key federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.5%, making it the sixth such increase in what the policymakers have described as a campaign of "measured" rate increases. But minutes of that meeting, released Wednesday, suggested that the campaign could become less predictable. Since June 30, the FOMC has raised the rate at each of the six meetings it has held, saying it wants to restore the rate to a "neutral" level that neither stimulates nor constrains economic growth. That level historically has ranged between 3.5% to 5%. FOMC members concluded they hadn't achieved neutrality even after this month's rate increase, the minutes show. "Even with this action, the real federal funds rate was generally seen as remaining below levels that might reasonably be associated with maintaining a stable inflation rate over the medium run," the minutes say. "The pace of policy moves at upcoming meetings, however, would depend on incoming data."