Markets widely expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates for the fourth time this year at its December meeting. The question is what the central bank will do next year. Recent sticky inflation prints and evidence the US economy is growing at a solid pace have raised doubts that the Fed will bring down rates as quickly as it previously

Powell just a week after the meeting said the economy was "not sending any signals that we need to be in a hurry to lower rates."

The account of the central bank’s Nov. 6-7 meeting, released on Tuesday, showed that Fed officials still planned to cut interest rates further. But with the job market holding up better than expected and the economy growing at a solid clip, they are in no rush to slash them rapidly.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that interest rates are still expected to decline further, but suggested they might not be that much lower over the next few months.

Federal Reserve officials appeared divided at their meeting earlier this month over how much farther they may need to cut interest rates, but as a group agreed to avoid giving much guidance from here on about how U.

October's Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures changes in the cost of consumer goods and services, showed that annual inflation rose by 2.6%. That's not an alarmingly high rate of inflation. It's also only a modest uptick from September's CPI reading, which measured annual inflation at 2.4%.

Federal Reserve officials appeared divided at their meeting earlier this month over how much farther they may need to cut interest rates, but as a group agreed this was a moment to avoid giving much concrete guidance about how US monetary policy is likely to evolve in the weeks ahead.