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Officials at the Federal Reserve appear poised to confront high inflation.
Federal Reserve officials at their meeting last month eyed a faster timetable for weaning markets off pandemic-era stimulus measures and raising interest rates this year perhaps as soon as March.
Minutes of their Dec. 14-15 meeting, released Wednesday, showed officials believed that rising inflation and a very tight labor market could call for lifting short-term rates “sooner or at a faster pace than participants had earlier anticipated.”
Some officials also thought the Fed should start shrinking its $8.76 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets relatively soon after beginning to raise rates, the minutes said.
Most central bank officials, in projections released after that meeting, penciled in at least three quarter-percentage-point rate increases this year. In September, around half of those officials thought rate increases could wait until 2023.
U.S. stocks traded lower Wednesday as investors digested the Fed’s meeting for clues about its plans.
Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal here.