U.S. Fed to Hold Seven Rate-Setting Meetings in 2027, Skip October Vote

【Financial News, New York—Correspondent Lee Byung-cheol】  The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) will reduce the number of annual benchmark interest rate decisions from eight to seven starting next year. The move is part of a reform of monetary policy operations being pursued by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. The aim is to reduce the Fed’s influence on markets and focus on long-term monetary policy strategy rather than short-term interest rate forecasts.
On the 12th (local time), the Fed decided that its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting scheduled for October 26–27, 2027, would be used to discuss monetary policy strategy without making a benchmark interest rate decision.
Accordingly, the FOMC will still hold eight regularly scheduled meetings next year, as before, but the number of meetings at which members vote on whether to change the benchmark interest rate will fall to seven. At the October meeting, both the rate vote and the policy statement normally released immediately afterward will be omitted.
Next year’s final rate-setting meeting will also be moved up from its originally scheduled dates of December 7–8 to November 16–17. This year’s final FOMC meeting, however, will take place as scheduled on December 8–9.
The move is closely tied to the overhaul of the Fed’s communications practices that Chair Warsh has been pursuing. Warsh has criticized the Fed for providing markets with too many signals about the future path of interest rates, thereby undermining the flexibility of policy decisions.
Since Warsh took office, FOMC statements have been substantially shortened, and the chair’s press conference Q&A sessions have also been cut from about 45 minutes to around 30 minutes.
At a press conference last October, Warsh emphasized that “to formulate sound monetary policy, short-term economic conditions must be assessed regularly,” while also stressing that “it is important to ensure that policymakers with diverse perspectives have the time and space to discuss long-term issues.”
He also described the overhaul of the meeting schedule as “more than a mere administrative detail,” explaining that it was “an institutional choice that affects the nature and quality of policy discussions and, ultimately, the wisdom of policy decisions.”
The Fed plans to expand these changes in stages. Warsh proposed increasing the number of meetings without a rate-setting vote to two per year in 2028. In that case, the number of meetings at which benchmark interest rate decisions are actually made would fall to six a year.




[email protected] Correspondent Lee Byung-cheol Reporter