Mission Accomplished?

On Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve Banks' FOMC kicked off its change in trajectory for easier monetary policy going forward with an aggressive, but somewhat priced in 50-basis point reduction made to its target range for the Fed Funds Rate. The benchmark rate now stands at 4.75% to 5%. At the median, in the FOMC's economic projections, the group also signaled cuts of another 50 basis points over the final two policy meetings of this calandar year.

As mentioned above, the aggressive first move did not take traders completely by surprise. Futures markets had been prepared for such a move. What did take traders by surprise, was the strange press conference where Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that while unemployment is now the focus, "This is still a solid labor market." He referred to the economy in general as healthy, while stating that he still expected consumer level inflation to reach the Fed's 2% target.

Oh, so we always cut rates aggressively when everything is fine?