Federal Reserve officials raised their main interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point — the biggest increase since 1994 — and signaled they will keep hiking aggressively this year, resorting to drastic measures to restrain the rampant inflation they failed to forecast.
Slammed by critics for not anticipating the fastest price gains in four decades and then for being too slow to respond to them, Chairman Jerome Powell and colleagues on Wednesday intensified their effort to cool prices by lifting the target range for the federal funds rate to 1.5% to 1.75%.
They projected raising it to 3.4% by year-end, implying another 175 basis points of tightening this year.
