Federal Reserve officials held an unusual video conference last month to debate scrapping the 6.5 per cent unemployment rate threshold for the first interest rate rises, paving the way for the big shift in forward guidance that took place later in March.
Minutes of the Fed’s last monetary policy meeting, released on Wednesday, laid bare an intense discussion about forward guidance among officials in recent weeks after Janet Yellen took over as chairwoman.
On March 18-19, “almost all” members of the Federal Open Market Committee agreed that the numerical 6.5 per cent threshold beyond which the central bank might raise rates should be replaced with new qualitative language detailing the economic circumstances that would warrant higher rates.