Fed Has Rarely Been So Divided Over Its Long-Term Plan for Rates

After cutting interest rates by more than a percentage point, Federal Reserve officials are now wondering where to stop – and finding there’s more disagreement than ever.

In the past year or so, prescriptions for where rates should end up have diverged by the most since at least 2012, when US central bankers started publishing their estimates. That’s feeding into an unusually public split over whether to deliver another cut next week, and what comes after that.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has acknowledged “strongly differing views” across the rate-setting committee about which of their two goals ...