Three of the Federal Reserve’s regional banks — Minneapolis, St. Louis and Cleveland — voted last month to raise the discount rate for banks by 50 basis points to 5%, according to minutes of the meeting about the discount rate released by the central bank on Tuesday.
Seven district banks voted to raise the rate by 25 basis points to 4.75%. Two regional banks, Atlanta and Dallas, voted to leave the discount rate unchanged at 4.5%.
Many economists believe the regional requests to the Fed for discount-rate changes often are signals for desired moves in the central bank’s benchmark federal-funds rates.
The minutes of the Jan. 31- Feb. 1 meeting reported that only a “few” Fed officials wanted a 50-basis-point move.
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester both have said publicly that they supported a 50-basis-point move.
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is scheduled to speak on Wednesday.
The voting members of the Fed’s interest-rate committee ultimately approved raising the federal-funds rate by 25 basis points to a range of 4.5%-4.75%. The vote was unanimous.
The federal-funds rate, set by the Fed’s interest-rate committee, is the central bank’s primary means of adjusting policy. While it is a riskless rate that commercial banks charge each other for overnight loans, raising it includes short-term rates on loans and credit cards, and those ripple into the economy.
The separate discount rate moves in step with the federal-funds rate. It is the interest rate charged to commercial banks for loans from the central bank’s discount window.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.705%
has risen since the two-day policy meeting. Fed officials will meet again on March 21-22.
