The Federal Reserve slowed its drive to rein in inflation and said further interest-rate hikes are in store as officials debate when to end their most aggressive tightening of credit in four decades.
Chair Jerome Powell and fellow policymakers lifted the Fed’s target for its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%. The smaller move followed a half-point increase in December and four jumbo-sized 75 basis-point hikes prior to that.
Powell told reporters at his post-meeting press conference that policy will need to remain restrictive “for some time” and that officials would need “substantially more evidence” to be confident that inflation was on track to decline to the Fed’s 2% target.
