PANews, May 23 - According to a report by Caixin, at 2 a.m. Beijing time on Thursday, the Federal Reserve released the minutes of its policy meeting held from April 30 to May 1 as scheduled. As expected by the market, Federal Reserve officials emphasized that due to disappointing inflation data, the policy rate needs to be maintained at the current level for a longer period than previously anticipated.

In the decision announced on May 1, the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 5.25%-5.50% for the sixth consecutive time. It also announced that starting in June, the pace of reducing its Treasury holdings would be slowed from $60 billion per month to $25 billion per month. Due to this news, and shortly before the release of the minutes, Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon publicly stated that he predicts "the Federal Reserve will not cut interest rates this year," the three major U.S. stock indices continued to decline after 2 a.m. However, considering that the Federal Reserve's "lack of confidence" was already well-known, the overall market decline was relatively restrained.

The minutes indicated that the committee members believed that compared to last year's continuous decline in inflation, there has been a lack of progress in recent months towards further reducing inflation to the 2% target. Although some members tried to attribute the January data increase to "an unusually large seasonal distortion" or "some items with long-term price volatility pushing up inflation," other members pointed out that "price increases are widespread, and you should not overly ignore them." After a series of discussions, the members reached the most important conclusion of the entire report: a rate cut might have to wait. The participants noted that they continue to expect inflation to return to 2% in the medium term, but recent data has not increased their confidence in the decline of inflation. Therefore, the process of reducing inflation may take longer than previously expected. Furthermore, "several participants" indicated that if the risk of further rising inflation materializes in some form, they are willing to tighten policy further. All officials unanimously agreed that a rate cut would not be appropriate until they have greater confidence that inflation will fall to 2%.