If the question’s how best to read the May FOMC minutes, the answer’s that it’s best not to. Not to read them, I mean.

Every account of the last policy gathering is by definition stale, and the one released on Wednesday afternoon in the US was no exception. The balance of the data since Jerome Powell’s May 1 press conference has actually skewed dovish, validating, perhaps, Powell’s disinclination to encourage bets on additional rate hikes.

To briefly recap, we’ve had a contraction-territory ISM services print, an NFP undershoot, a cool AHE read, horrible sentiment numbers, a retail sales miss and, of course, a relatively benign CPI release.

In light of all that, there’s an overriding suspicion that the Fed’s once again setting itself up for a U-turn. In recent days, markets heard from a procession of Fed speakers, all of whom emphasized that it’s likely to be a while on rate cuts.

Critics were left to sigh: The Fed pivoted too early in Q4, allowing inflation to get another foothold and now, in a bid to assuage last quarter’s concerns in that regard, the Committee’s leaning hawkish into this quarter’s slowdown.

That’s the context for the May meeting minutes which were unsurprisingly hawkish. “Various participants” expressed a “willingness” to raise rates further in the event inflation were to “materialize in a way that such an action became appropriate.” That camp apparently didn’t (and doesn’t) include Powell, or at least not judging from his remarks at the press conference and a subsequent speaking engagement during which he reiterated that the next move isn’t likely to be a hike.

In addition, “a number” of officials were unsure as to “the degree of restrictiveness of current financial conditions.” Those officials expressed something like concern around “the associated risk that such conditions were insufficiently restrictive on aggregate demand and inflation.”

Overall, Fed officials flagged “disappointing readings on inflation over the first quarter” and generally agreed “that it would take longer than previously anticipated… to gain greater confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward 2%.”

Coming full circle, there’s not a lot to glean. It’s obvious from the last several days worth of soundbites that the Fed’s keen on a rejuvenated “higher for longer” narrative, and as detailed in the last Weekly, some believe that puts Powell and co. at risk of (another) policy mistake.