The Fed just aggressively raised interest rates again

Jerome Powell.
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it will again be raising interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point, as the central bank continues its aggressive push to tackle sky-high inflation.

The 12-member Federal Open Market Committee unanimously approved the atypical hike, and also signaled in a post-meeting statement that "ongoing increases" are to be expected, The New York Times reports. Wednesday's bump will lift the federal-funds rate — or, "the rate at which commercial banks borrow and lend their excess reserves to each other overnight," per Investopedia — to a range between 2.25 percent and 2.5 percent, adds The Wall Street Journal.

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The central bank has raised interest rates 4 times and a total of 225 basis points this year, "as it battles a 1980s-level breakout of inflation with 1980s-style monetary policy," Reuters writes. Investors are expecting at least a 0.5-percentage-point increase in September.

Though the bank hopes it can bring down prices without tipping the U.S. into a recession, an economic downturn is still possible.

Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.