Many Federal Reserve officials said in their meeting in June that they would be willing to cut interest rates if the economy continued to struggle in coming weeks, according to minutes of the discussion released on Wednesday.

Officials appeared caught off guard in mid-June about sudden "significant" signs of weakness in the economy, calling them "quite recent." Given how quickly things were developing, Fed officials decided to take a wait-and-see attitude. While almost all agreed to hold interest rates steady in June, "many" officials said rate cuts would be warranted if risks and uncertainties "continued to weigh on the economic outlook." And that's exactly how Fed Chairman Jerome Powell described the economy's performance since mid-June in his testimony to Congress earlier Wednesday.

Source : Marketwatch