Brian Chappatta, Columnist

Fed’s Opening Two Sentences Could Signal Its Shift

The central bank’s tone about Covid-19 may give traders a hint about when it will consider tapering.

April 28, 2021 at 8:10 PM UTC

Brian Chappatta is managing editor of Bloomberg News' leveraged finance and distressed debt teams. He was previously managing editor and team leader of its wealth group. Before that he was a Bloomberg Opinion markets and finance columnist and a bonds reporter for Bloomberg News.

Jerome Powell makes clear the coronavirus and economy are inextricably linked.
Photographer: Pool/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Heading into this Federal Open Market Committee decision, most central-bank watchers knew that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues would do little to rock the boat. Indeed, as expected, they left the fed funds rate unchanged in a range of 0% to 0.25% and left its asset purchases at $120 billion a month after their two-day meeting.

The Fed’s statement struck a delicate balance between optimism over the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. and dismay that so many Americans remain out of work. Policy makers in March described the Covid-19 health crisis as posing “considerable risks to the economic outlook.” On Wednesday, they seemed to scale back the pandemic’s implications for the world’s largest economy, noting only that “risks to the economic outlook remain.”