Yesterday the Federal Open Market Committee, otherwise known as the FOMC or FED released its minutes for the March 13, 2012 FOMC meeting.

These minutes outline the meeting and are typically released 3 weeks post meeting. During FOMC meetings, member discuss the state of the economy based on their most recent available data and vote on forward moving measures.

FOMC Minutes Summary

The FOMC minutes revealed that the members are watching the market with a wait and see attitude before making changes to its current policy stance. This means that any future easing by the FOMC is on hold for now.

You may here market watchers refer to market easing as QE3, which is short for the third round of quantitative easing or “quantitative easing 3″. Quantitative easing refers to certain monetary policy actions the FOMC can use to help stimulate the economy.

The FOMC also indicated that they are not fully confident that the employment growth the market has seen thus far will continue.

Mortgage Rate Reaction to the FOMC

The markets reacted strongly to the FOMC minutes with a fast rise in mortgage rates. The FOMC statements were a bit of a surprise to the markets since the statements about no further easing in the short term seemed for some to conflict with past statements made by the FOMC.

Where Are Mortgage Rates Now?

If we posted the current mortgage rates at the time of this writing, there is a very high likelihood they would be out of date by the time you read this since mortgage rates can change many times each day. Please request a free mortgage rate quote using the form above or call us directly to get up to the minute mortgage rate updates.