Arirang News2023.2.2---美聯儲小幅加息 0.25%p.但仍預計持續加息

We start in the U.S. where the Federal Open Market Committee took a widely expected baby step, lifting interest rates by a qua
rter of a percentage point thanks to some encouraging signs in the U.S. economy. But it says the job's not fully done, signaling further rate hikes to come. Shin Se-byuck leads us our coverage this morning.
The Federal Reserve has once again slowed its target interest rate increase as it raised policy rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday.
But, it hinted at further hikes to come.
"Today, the FOMC raised our policy rates by 25bps. We continue to anticipate that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time."
The "baby step" hike matches market expectations. Last year alone, the Fed increased policy rates seven times, making it the fastest increase since the 1980s.
Accordingly, the US benchmark interest rate jumped to a range of 4-point-5 to 4-point-7-5 percent.
The Fed's latest decision comes amid two encouraging wage growth and inflation trends in the U.S. late last year after infl
ation soared to 9-point-1 percent in June, a level not seen in over 40 years. After taking four consecutive 'giant steps' of 75 bp rate hikes from June to November last year,.. the Fed slowed the pace to 50 last month.
Still, Fed officials signaled there's still a long way to combat inflation.
"While recent developments are certainly encouraging, we'll need substantially more evidence to be confident that inflation is on a sustained, downward path."
The latest statement assessed the current inflation situation as eased but still elevated. Powell also warned that the job is "not fully done", as he said he doesn't expect rate cuts this year.
With Wednesday's announcement, the interest rate gap to Korea widened to as much as 1-point-2-5 percentage points the largest gap in over 22 years.
Shin Se-byuck, Arirang News.