The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s survey of primary dealers conducted before policy makers’ Dec. 13 meeting showed the firms expected the Fed to raise its benchmark interest rate during the second quarter of 2014. Respondents saw a 45 percent chance the first rate increase would occur in the second quarter of 2014 or later, according to the results posted today on the New York Fed’s website. The median among the predictions for the timing of the first increase was the second quarter of 2014, the bank said in a statement. The Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate near zero since December 2008. The December survey asked primary dealers the probability that central bankers would make changes to their public communications within the next year. Fed officials decided at the last meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee to start publishing their own forecasts for the central bank’s key interest rate, according to minutes of the gathering released yesterday. The questions for the December survey and its predecessors for the seven other Fed policy meetings in 2011 were published last month as part of “ongoing efforts to increase transparency,” the regional Fed bank said in a statement at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment