The United States Federal Reserve raised interest rates 75 basis pointsfor a range between 1.5% and 1.75%, and guarantees of having a “strong commitment” to lowering the inflation rate to the 2% target. There hasn’t been a rise in interest rates as fast as three-quarters of a percentage point since 1994, and the central bank has signaled that it will pick up the pace of interest rate hikes going forward.
After President Joe Biden considered high inflation “a cross of our existence”, the Federal Reserve (Fed) writes in the statement released this Wednesday that “the Open Market Operations Committee [a cúpula da Fed, que decide sobre política monetária] has a strong commitment to return inflation to the 2% target“. The US inflation rate hit 8.6% in May, in what is becoming a sensitive issue for Biden, who faces midterm elections next November.
The Fed’s estimate at the moment is that interest rates will double by the end of the year, to a level of the order of 3.40% at the end of 2022 to 2023 and, at the end of 2023, 3.8%. As for inflation, it should slow down 5.2% in 2022 to 2.6% in 2023 and 2.2% for 2024 – the previous forecast for average annual inflation in 2022 was 4.3%.
Source: Observadora
