Full text of U.S. Financial Data : April 19, 2001

The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies.

April 19, 2001

USFinancialData
THE WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS:
■ On April 18, 2001, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to
reduce its federal funds target rate by 50 basis points to 4.5 percent.
Separately, the Board of Governors also voted to cut the discount
rate by a similar amount to 4 percent. In the press release
announcing these actions, the FOMC noted that:
[C]apital investment has continued to soften and the persistent
erosion in current and expected profitability, in combination with
rising uncertainty about the business outlook, seems poised to
dampen capital spending going forward. This potential restraint,
together with the possible effects of earlier reductions in equity
wealth on consumption and the risk of slower growth abroad,
threatens to keep the pace of economic activity unacceptably
weak. The Committee continues to believe that . . . the risks are
weighted mainly toward conditions that may generate economic
weakness in the foreseeable future.
■ Following gains of 0.6 percent in January and 0.3 percent in
February, the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.1 percent in March.
Excluding food and energy prices, the CPI rose 0.2 percent. During
the first quarter, the total CPI rose at a 4.2 percent annual rate and
the so-called core CPI increased at a 3.2 percent rate. The firstquarter gain in the core CPI was the largest since the second quarter
of 1995.
■ In February, the U.S. goods and services trade deficit totaled
$27 billion, the smallest since December 1999.
All data are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise indicated.
U.S. Financial Data is published weekly by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of
St. Louis. For more information on data, please call (314) 444-8590. To be added to the mailing
list, please call (314) 444-8809.
Information in this publication is also included in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) data base
on the internet at www.stls.frb.org/fred.