They were not, though, in a panic or worried about an imminent recession. Instead, they were thinking that the old interest rate would not be appropriate going forward.

The only Federal Reserve official to dissent from the central bank’s aggressive half-point interest-rate cut earlier this week said she thought it would send the wrong message to markets that inflation was dead.

A Federal Reserve official predicted quarter point rate cuts if data looked ‘fine’. But he also set out a scenario for a pause — or faster reductions.