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Fed Scales Back Rate-Rise Forecasts as Global Risks Remain

Federal Reserve officials held off from raising borrowing costs and scaled back forecasts for how high interest rates will rise this year, citing the potential impact from weaker global growth and financial-market turmoil on the U.S. economy.

The Federal Open Market Committee kept the target range for the benchmark federal funds rate at 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, the central bank said in a statement Wednesday following a two-day meeting in Washington. The median of policy makers’ updated quarterly projections saw the rate at 0.875 percent at the end of 2016, implying two quarter-point increases this year, down from four forecast in December.

“You have seen a shift this time, in most participants assessments of the appropriate path for policy,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said at a press conference in Washington. “That largely reflects a somewhat slower projected path for global growth, for growth in the global economy outside the United States, and for some tightening in credit conditions in the form of an increase in spreads.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/fed-scales-back-rate-rise-forecasts-as-global-outlook-weakens