Federal Reserve Considers 10th Round of Interest Rate Hikes
Wall Street Journal: Federal Reserve officials are on track to increase interest rates again at their meeting this week while deliberating whether that will be enough to then pause the fastest rate-raising cycle in 40 years. “We are much closer to the end of the tightening journey than the beginning,” Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said April 20. Just how much closer the Fed is to that endgame will be a focus of internal debate because officials think their communications around future policy actions can be as significant as individual rate changes (Wall Street Journal). CNBC: This 0.25 percentage point hike will mark the 10th time the Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate over the past year or so, the fastest pace of tightening since the early 1980s. Even though the Fed’s rate-hiking cycle has started to cool inflation, higher prices are causing real wages to decline. Real average hourly earnings are down 0.7% from a year earlier, according to the latest reading from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because incomes have not kept pace with inflation, household budgets are squeezed, causing more people to lean on credit just when interest rates have been rising at the fastest pace in decades (CNBC).
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/01/what-another-federal-reserve-rate-hike-means-for-you.html