At the May FOMC meeting, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested the Bank's monetary policy stance was “in a good place”, but it is obvious that officials are concerned about the recent lack of progress on inflation. Rate hikes remain unlikely, but the Fed is prepared to leave interest rates at current levels until that progress is achieved or the jobs market clearly weakens. Ahead of that meeting, markets were only pricing around 28bp of rate cuts for this year, having fully discounted over 150bp in January. But some cautious comments on the prospects for the labour market from Chair Powell and the subsequent ... (full story)