ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Fed Announces Interest Rate Hike of 0.75 Percentage Point—Again

Chair Jerome Powell said that the Federal Reserve would slow the pace of the hikes at some point in the future.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced the decision to raise its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, an expected strategy deployed in an effort to cool off rapid inflation. The rate increase is the fourth this year, and the second consecutive 0.75 percentage point jump. The Wednesday move takes the federal policy rate to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent, according to CNBC, representing a recent shift that has seen the Fed’s total basis points spike to a level unseen since the 1980s, when it began using overnight fund rates. Though Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned of the potential for “another unusually large increase” in the future, he added that “as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases while we assess how our cumulative policy adjustments are affecting the economy and inflation.”