Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at the Federal Open Market Committee press conference Wednesday that a slower pace of reduction could help the central bank avoid shrinking its holdings further without disrupting the banking system.

Rates won't fall far enough to drive meaningful mortgage volume gains this year, according to a Fitch Ratings analyst.

Federal Reserve officials have hammered home the importance of bank readiness to borrow from the discount window. Getting banks to actually do so may require the Fed to make structural improvements to the system.

During a contentious exchange on his second day of congressional testimony this week, the Federal Reserve chair drew a line between the central bank's response to last year's bank failures and its current capital proposal.

Market participants have been so focused on determining when and how much the Federal Reserve will slow its balance-sheet unwind that they haven't even started to consider another wrinkle: the composition of the U.S. central bank's assets.

Until Congress addresses the federal deficit, the tendency will be for higher long-term interest rates regardless of what the Fed does with the short end of the yield curve, writes the Chairman of Whalen Global Advisors.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said he'd like to see the central bank's holdings of mortgage-backed securities go to zero. 

The so-called core personal consumption expenditures price index, which strips out the volatile food and energy components, increased 0.4% from December, data out Thursday showed. From a year ago, it advanced 2.8%. Economists consider this to be a better gauge of underlying inflation than the overall index.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said the economy is headed in the right direction, and it will likely be appropriate to cut interest rates later this year

The Federal Reserve expects to cut interest rates three times this year, some say as early as March, if data alllow those moves. Following the Jan. 30-31 FOMC meeting, Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, will provide his take on the meeting and Chair Jerome Powell's press conference.