Federal Reserve officials agreed to hold interest rates steady after 10 consecutive increases but signaled they were prepared to raise rates next month if the economy and inflation don’t cool more.
New economic projections, released Wednesday after their two-day policy meeting, strongly suggested officials were leaning toward slowing down their increases rather than stopping them altogether. Most of them penciled in two more rate increases this year, which would lift them to a 22-year high, and boosted their expectations for growth and inflation.
“They really needed to hammer home the message that this was not the end, which they did,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG.
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