Directors at three regional Federal Reserve banks voted in January to increase the interest rate charged to commercial banks for emergency loans by a quarter of a percentage point, minutes of their discount rate meetings showed on Tuesday.
The rate-hike recommendations—from directors of the Cleveland, St. Louis, and Kansas City Feds—were overruled two weeks later when U.S. central bankers determined to keep the Fed’s policy rate in its current range of 0-0.25 percent. The last time Fed regional banks split over discount-rate views was in October 2019, when the U.S. central bank was cutting rates.
