Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
FILE - Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, right, testifies before at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee in Washington on Nov. 30, 2021. At left is Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary. Federal Reserve officials are shifting their focus away from bolstering the economic recovery and toward trying to guard against out-of-control inflation, and on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021, they are expected to announce they are hastening plans to cut their policy help.
WASHINGTON - For months, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell responded to surging inflation by counseling patience and stressing that the Fed wanted to see unemployment return to near-pre-pandemic levels before it would raise interest rates.
But on Wednesday, Powell suggested that his patience has run out. High inflation has not only persisted but accelerated to a nearly four-decade high. Average wages are rising. Hiring is solid, and unemployment is falling. All those trends, Powell said at a news conference, have led him and the rest of the Fed's policymakers to decide that now is the time to speed up the Fed's tightening of credit.
The central bank said it will reduce its monthly bond purchases - which are intended to lower long-term rates - at twice the pace it had previously set and will likely end the purchases in March. That accelerated timetable puts the Fed on a path to start raising rates as early as the first half of next year.
https://www.startribune.com/why-the-fed-feels-now-is-time-to-tighten-credit-more-quickly/600127389/
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