The Federal Reserve on Wednesday increased interest rates for the first time since 2018 and laid out an aggressive plan to push borrowing costs to restrictive levels in the coming year, a pivot from battling the coronavirus pandemic to countering the risks of excessive inflation and the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee has announced that it will officially begin the process of increasing interest rates! The decision comes after a quarter- percentage-point hike in the federal funds rate. This is a significant step towards increasing underlying interest rates on consumers and businesses.
How Interest Rates Moved Back In 2018
It was widely anticipated that rates would go up in 2018, and similarly, we get the sense that the rate hikes have already been baked into the market back then. For the first half of the 2018, 2-year fixed interest rates inched up only about 10bps to 1.75%, and 3-year fixed...