Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates For 3rd Time This Year

Federal Reserve money policymakers Wednesday announced a 25-basis-point cut in interest rates and signaled no more cuts are in the offing for the immediate future.

The Federal Open Markets Committee announced the cut to a 1.5% to 1.75% target range for the federal funds rate -- the rate at which banks borrow money for overnight transactions. President Trump had been pushing for a cut into negative territory.

The action was the third such cut this year. The FOMC trimmed rates by a quarter point at its July and September meetings. It is scheduled to meet one more time this year in December.

"The committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook as it assesses the appropriate path of the target range for the federal funds rate," the Fed said in its statement after the meeting.

The statement added: "In determining the timing and size of future adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the committee will assess realized and expected economic conditions relative to its maximum employment objective and its symmetric 2% inflation objective."

At a news conference following the announcement, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed has no hard plan for interest rate adjustments.

“There will come a time, I suspect, when we think we’ve done enough, but there may also come a time when the economy worsens, and we would then have to cut more aggressively," Powell said.

He said at the moment, no consideration is being given to hiking rates.

“We just touched 2% core inflation to pick one measure. Just touched it for a few months and then we’ve fallen back,” Powell said. “So I think we would need to see a really significant move up in inflation that’s persistent before we would consider raising rates to address inflation concerns.”

The vote was 8-2 in favor of cutting rates.

The question now becomes whether easy money will lead to the kind of bubbles that have led to economic disaster in the past.

"Historical examples include stock portfolio loans in the 1920s that led to the Depression, easy money for tech companies in the late 1990s that led to the tech bubble, and hard-money lending that led to the mortgage bubble of 2008," said Kelly Crane, president and chief investment officer at Napa Valley Wealth Management.

By the same token, the Fed didn't have much of a choice given that the rest of the world also is easing monetary policy, Crane said.

Mark Anthony Grimaldi, chief portfolio manager at Grimaldi Portfolio Solutions, said the economy is in a much different position than it was just ahead of the Great Recession and the FOMC would have been better off waiting until December to cut rates.

Nevertheless, Grimaldi said he doesn't see danger of an investment bubble on the horizon.

"Bubbles are very rarely formed heading into an election year. I believe 2020 will be a year of violent [market] swings that will have little to do with the economic climate and much more in sync with the political trends," he said.