What counts as short-term? On a monthly basis this is definitely lower because they cut by 0.5% instead of 0.25%. On a 2026+ basis expectations have been steady at ~3%, don't understand how 4.x% could be lower than that.
Personally I think the 3% long-term expectation is ridiculous, and we'll either see high (10%+) rates as inflation spirals out of control, or low (0%) rates as we get another depression, and likely oscillation between the two of them. You can't use monetary policy to fix a demographic problem. But the projection for 3+ years out has held constant at 2.5-3% since at least 2018, even as the reality went from 2.5% to 0% to 5% during that time period. Just like all the projections for inflation always converge on 2% even if they're wrong.
One is the Fed dot plots that the Fed puts out with each FOMC statement. These are a poll of Fed governors about what they think interest rates will be like at various points in the future. The midpoint of the current spread is about 3%. You can Google for past FOMC statements and look up historical data, but it's stayed at around 3% since at least 2018, with a slight dip to maybe 2.5% in 2020/2021:
The other is the rates on 3Y Treasury Bonds, which measure what bond traders consensus expectation for the average interest rate over that 3Y period will be. To go out further (and minimize the impact of short-term fluctuations), you could also go out to 5Y. Currently, both are trading at 3.5%, which indicates that the market expects that the Fed will equilibrate at about 3.5%.
