Most Federal Open Market Committee participants supported maintaining the target rate for the federal funds rate at the July 28-29 meeting, opting to wait for more information before raising rates, minutes of that meeting released Wednesday showed.
"Participants generally thought that the information that would accumulate in the intermeeting period could provide more clarity, and correspondingly reduce uncertainty, about the inflation outlook," according to the minutes. "Participants generally observed that economic activity had continued to expand at a solid pace and that labor market conditions appeared stable."
The FOMC maintained the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.50% to 3.75% and made no major changes to the statement, but three Fed presidents -- Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari, and Lorie Logan -- dissented in favor of a 25-basis point rate increase. There was no update to the Summary of Economic Projections at the meeting.
There were "several participants" that supported a rate increase at the meeting, believing that price pressures were "broad based" and required action on the part of the FOMC to achieve price-stability.
Incoming information would determine the future path of policy and "many" participants suggested that policy tightening would be needed in the absence of declining inflation.
Those that preferred a rate increase at the July meeting said "that doing so would likely help forestall the need for a steeper and potentially more costly sequence of tightening moves at a later stage."
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh suggested that reducing the number of FOMC meetings to six from the current eight "would allow more information to accumulate between meetings than under current practice and provide policymakers and the staff more time to consider strategic monetary policy issues."
No decision was made on this issue and Warsh said that any changes would not impact the current schedule of meetings in 2026.