The Federal Reserve elected to
keep interest rates on hold following its September meeting, citing developments in the global economy and financial markets that will exert downward pressure on inflation in the near term.
Along with the statement, the central bank also released a set of projections—
known as the "dot plot"—from members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which include forecasts of where each policymaker thinks the Fed should have its policy rate at the end of a given period.
There's one remarkable outlier in the projections:
For the first time ever, one monetary policymaker thinks the U.S. needs to move to negative interest rates until at least the end of 2016 to achieve full employment and get inflation back to 2 percent.