Fed leaves rates unchanged and moves to ease the pace of balance sheet reduction

Meantime, let’s go to Steve Liesman for the decision. The Federal Reserve leaving rates on hold in the range of five and 4:45 and a half percent. It does note a lack of further progress on inflation in recent months. The prior statement had noted that there had been progress. It says the risk to achieving the dual mandate have moved towards better balance in the past year. Note that they had said before we’re moving. So that’s another kind of reference to stalled progress on inflation. It repeats that it does not expect to cut until it is confident inflation is moving towards that 2% target. It reduced the quantitative tightening runoff to 25 billion from 60 billion, pretty aggressive reduction there and that begins in June. A way to think about this is if my numbers are right, it’s a runoff. It had been going at 720 billion a year of treasuries by the way down to 300. It left the run off of mortgage-backed securities the same at 35 billion. Again that QT goes from 60 to 25 on treasuries and begins in June. That is a cap on the reduction. On the economy, the Federal Reserve says continues to say the economy is increasing at a solid pace. It says job gains have remained strong, repeats that inflation has eased, but again noted that progress has stalled. And I’m going to repeat some statements that they repeated this time around, but maybe now they’re perhaps more important. They said the committee strongly is committed to bringing inflation to 2%. They’re highly intended to the inflation risk, and they’re prepared to adjust policy as appropriate if risks emerge. Those have been in the statement for a long time, and maybe now they’re a little bit more important. Tyler, back to you.