A combination of falling oil prices and continued suggestions by Fed presidents that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) may raise interest rates sooner rather than later caused markets to suffer some losses today. The President of the St. Louis Fed James Bullard was the most recent Fed president to add to the increasing number of Fed officials who say it’s time for the Federal Reserve to bump up interest rates again.
Bullard told Bloomberg News today:
“We didn’t do it, so now we can look at April and see what the data look like when we get to April.”
Bullard had said just last month that it would be “unwise” to move any further due to weak inflation and global volatility. Bullard’s words came right after Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said the Fed should consider another interest rate hike as soon as April. Energy fell 2% to lead S&P 500 decliners as oil broke below $40 a barrel.
See more from CNBC below.
Here are the final numbers from Wednesday 3/23/16 on Wall Street
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,502.59 (-79.98/ -.45 %)
NASDAQ: 4,768.86 (-52.80/ -1.10 %)
S&P 500: 2,036.71 (-13.09/ -0.64 %)
