Fed meeting live: Fed holds rates in Warsh's first meeting; more officials see hike ahead Yahoo Finance Updated June 18, 2026 2 min read The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in the range of 3.5%-3.75% on Wednesday in a unanimous decision that comes at a pivotal time for the Fed and central banks around the world. Nine of 18 members of the Federal Open Markets Committee projected that they see a rate hike coming this year, in what is being read as a hawkish tilt for the Federal Reserve. The projections pushed traders to fully price in one quarter-point rate hike by the end of the year, and stocks pulled back on the news.
"Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East," per the Federal Reserve's statement on the decision. "Productivity growth and capital investment are strong. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little." The June meeting, which kicked off Tuesday, was Kevin Warsh's first as the central bank's chairman.
In comments leading up to the meeting, Warsh had suggested he will adopt a different governing approach from former Fed Chair Jerome Powell and aims to emulate former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. In Wednesday's meeting, the new chairman laid out some of those changes, noting that the Federal Reserve had "dropped forward guidance," and that while he encouraged his fellow FOMC members to submit so-called "dot-plot" projections, he chose not to participate. Warsh also said he would be establishing several task forces to review areas including Fed communications, its balance sheet, and the central bank's inflation frameworks.
Key to Warsh's commentary was a statement that he believes financial markets "perform best when they react to incoming data," and "work less efficiently when they ask a question, 'How will the Federal Reserve react to that incoming information?'" Notably, Warsh has not committed to holding press conferences after every policy meeting, a practice Powell instituted. Warsh suggested in Wednesday's press conference that the practice would be reviewed. {"contentId":"ba1f85db-1e05-4dcc-9199-8fd21525e8a4","canonicalUrl":"https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/live/fed-meeting-live-fed-holds-rates-in-warshs-first-meeting-more-officials-see-hike-ahead-141312780.html","owningPropertyUrl":"https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/live/fed-meeting-live-fed-holds-rates-in-warshs-first-meeting-more-officials-see-hike-ahead-141312780.html","providerId":"yahoofinance.com","commerceSiteId":"","site":"finance","region":"US","lang":"en-US","tags":[,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,],"categories":[,,,],"commerceArticleType":""} Terms and Privacy Policy EU DSA contact Privacy & Cookie Settings More Info
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