Economists at the US central bank (Fed) estimated in the minutes of the institution’s latest monetary meeting published on Wednesday that recent banking difficulties “could lead to a small recession” in the United States this year, AFP reported.

On March 22, despite this advice from its team of economists, the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Committee (FOMC) raised interest rates for the ninth time in a row.

This added a quarter of a percentage point to the cost of an overnight loan.

FOMC members acknowledged, however, that banking problems “are likely to tighten lending conditions for both households and businesses.”

Although the decision to raise rates for the ninth time in a row was made unanimously by voting members, “several members” of the Committee said they wondered “whether it would be appropriate to leave rates unchanged compared to this.”

According to them, this “would give us the opportunity to have more time at our disposal to assess the financial and economic consequences of recent banking events.”

Three regional US banks, starting with California-based SVB, a tech favorite, were forced to close in March due to massive withdrawals that some attributed in part to the effects of the rate hike.

On May 2 and 3, the Fed must decide whether to conduct another round of monetary tightening of the same order.

According to the minutes of the last meeting, in the eyes of Fed members, high inflation “is still at an unacceptable level.” At that time, inflation was 6% per year, according to the CPI index.

But consumer price inflation has since slowed to an annualized 5% in March, according to the latest CPI estimate released on Wednesday.