Fed unveils 2027 calendar, confirming October meeting will not include rates vote

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Fed unveils 2027 calendar, confirming October meeting will not include rates vote
The Federal Reserve on Thursday released next year’s schedule for its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), confirming that one meeting will feature discussions on strategy and not a vote on interest rates.
The Fed said in a release the FOMC will meet eight times in 2027, with the first meeting in late January and subsequent meetings at six-week intervals.
On the second and final day of those meetings, the panel will vote on the federal funds rate, with the exception of its gathering Oct. 26-27 next year.
That meeting, the Fed said, will be “dedicated to the discussion of broad monetary policy strategy issues.”
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh announced the change last month, after FOMC officials held interest rates steady at a range of 3.75 percent to 4 percent. The central bank chair said the committee is making the switch for “straightforward” reasons.
“Getting policy right involves assessing near-term developments at timely, regular and information-rich intervals,” he told reporters.
“But it’s equally important we reserve time and space, as an intellectually diverse group, for strategic deliberations — for thinking anew about big questions, looking out over longer time horizons, focusing, as I say, on the left side of the decimal point,” Warsh added.
Warsh raised a change to the FOMC’s schedule during the panel’s July meeting, according to the minutes.
The first-year chair “observed that six scheduled meetings” each year, held every two months, would “allow more information to accumulate between meetings” than under the status quo, the minutes noted.
Warsh said last month he expects the FOMC to have two meetings dedicated to strategy discussions and six for setting monetary policy in 2028. Under the Federal Reserve Act, the panel must meet at least four times per year.
Jason Furman, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Obama, praised Warsh’s tweak to the Fed calendar as a “great move” last month.
“I have long thought the Fed spends too much time on the immediate and not nearly enough time thinking about longer-term strategy,” Furman wrote on social platform X.
The change marks the latest example of Warsh, who succeeded former Fed Chair Jerome Powell in May, putting his imprint on the central bank.
The FOMC’s policy statements have skewed away from including “forward guidance,” information about the likely future conduct of monetary policy.
Warsh has also been alone among 19 committee officials in not providing a “dot” prediction about future rate decisions for either of the FOMC’s two quarterly economic projections since he took over.
The Fed chair has laid out his preference for limiting future projections throughout his nearly six months in charge, saying in July market participants “are learning to play the ball, not the referee” without them.
“I understand the desire for rolling forecasts and commentary from this committee. But for our part, we need to observe market reaction to developments, direct and unfiltered,” Warsh told reporters at the time.
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