US interest rates unchanged in September
22 September 2011
Federal Reserve took another unconventional step to boost the economy, after leaving interest rates unchanged, saying it would increase its share of longer-term Treasury’s by $400 billion by June 2012 in an effort to make credit cheaper and spur spending and investment. To help keep mortgage rates low, the Fed also said it would reinvest the proceeds from maturing agency debt and mortgage-backed securities into mortgage-related debt. Worried about inflation, Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed, Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis and Charles Plosser of Philadelphia dissented. The Fed said there are "significant downside risks to the economic outlook, including strains in global financial markets."