US Fed says rates will stay at 2-decade high
The number of franchised coffee branches in South Korea rose by more than 3,000 on-year in 2022 on growing demand for food and beverages with the ebbing of the COVID-19 pandemic and the expansion of budget brands, the antitrust regulator said.
The country had 26,217 franchise coffee shops as of the end of 2022, up 13 percent from the previous year's 23,204, according to data from the Fair Trade Commission.
It marked the highest growth among all kinds of food and beverage franchises in 2022.
Ediya Coffee had the largest number of branches with 3,005 shops, followed by Mega MGC Coffee with 2,156 and Compose Coffee with 1,901 branches. (Yonhap)
For inquiries regarding the use of
The Korea Herald’s Graphic News, please contact sabinalee@heraldcorp.com
Graphic by Nam Kyung-don
WASHINGTON (AP) — The US Federal Reserve emphasized Wednesday that inflation has remained stubbornly high in recent months and said it does not plan to cut interest rates until it has “greater confidence” that price increases are slowing sustainably to its 2 percent target.
The Fed issued its decision in a statement after its latest meeting, at which it kept its key rate at a twodecade high of roughly 5.3 percent. Several hotter-than-expected reports on prices and economic growth have recently undercut the Fed’s belief that inflation was steadily easing. The combination of high interest rates and persistent inflation has also emerged as a potential threat to President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
“In recent months,” Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference, “inflation has shown a lack of further progress toward our 2 percent objective.”
“It is likely that gaining greater confidence,” he added, “will take longer than previously expected.”
Powell did strike a note of optimism about inflation. Despite the recent setbacks, he said, “My expectation is that over the course of this year, we will see inflation move back down.”
Wall Street traders initially cheered the prospect that the Fed will cut rates at some point this year as well as Powell’s comment that the Fed is not considering reverting to rate increases to attack inflation.
“I think it’s unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike,” he said.
Later, though, stock prices erased their gains and finished the day essentially unchanged from where they were before Powell’s news conference.
Still, Powell sketched out a series of potential scenarios for the months ahead. He said that if hiring stayed strong and “inflation is moving sideways,” that “would be a case in which it would be appropriate to hold off on rate cuts.”
But if inflation continued to cool — or if unemployment rose unexpectedly — Powell said the Fed would likely be able to reduce its benchmark rate. Cuts would, over time, bring down the cost of mortgages, auto loans, and other consumer and business borrowing.
Those comments were “a signal that the (Fed) is a lot less confident that they know how policies are going to unfold over the course of this year,” said Jonathan Pingle, an economist at UBS. “We were all sort of hoping for an update on the committee’s path forward. And instead what we got was, ‘We’re really not confident enough to tell you what our path forward is going to be.’”
The central bank’s overarching message Wednesday — that more evidence is needed that inflation is slowing to the Fed’s target level before the policymakers would begin cutting rates — reflects an abrupt shift.