Fed likely to combat inflation with rate hike

Short-term interest rate projected to go up by 0.5 percent.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is poised this week to accelerate its most drastic steps in three decades to attack inflation by making it costlier to borrow for a car, — a home, a business deal, a credit card purchase all of — which will compound Americans’ financial strains and likely weaken the economy.

Yet with inflation having surged to a 40-year high, the Fed has come under extraordinary pressure to act aggressively to slow spending and curb the price spikes that are bedeviling households and companies.

After its latest rate-setting meeting ends today, the Fed will almost certainly announce that it’s raising its benchmark short-term interest rate by a half-percentage point — the sharpest rate hike since 2000. The Fed will likely carry out another half-point rate hike at its next meeting in June and possibly at the next one after that, in July. Economists foresee still further rate hikes in the months to follow.

What’s more, the Fed is also expected to announce today that it will begin quickly shrinking its vast stockpile of Treasury and mortgage bonds beginning in June — a move that will have the effect of further tightening credit.

Chair Jerome Powell and the Fed will take these steps largely in the dark. No one knows just how high the central bank’s short-term rate must go to slow the economy and restrain inflation. Nor do the officials know how much they can reduce the Fed’s unprecedented $9 trillion balance sheet before they risk destabilizing financial markets.

“I liken it to driving in reverse while using the rearview mirror,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the consulting firm Grant Thornton. “They just don’t know what obstacles they’re going to hit.”

Many economists think the Fed is acting too late. Even as inflation has soared, the Fed’s benchmark rate is in a range of just 0.25% to 0.5%, a level low enough to stimulate growth. Adjusted for inflation, the Fed’s key rate — which influences many consumer and business loans — is deep in negative territory.

That’s why Powell and other Fed officials have said in recent weeks that they want to raise rates “expeditiously,” to a level that neither boosts nor restrains the economy — what economists refer to as the “neutral” rate. Policymakers consider a neutral rate to be roughly 2.4%. But no one is certain what the neutral rate is at any particular time, especially in an economy that is evolving quickly.

If, as most economists expect, the Fed this year carries out three half-point rate hikes and then follows with three quarter-point hikes, its rate would reach roughly neutral by year’s end. Those increases would amount to the fastest pace of rate hikes since 1989, noted Roberto Perli, an economist at Piper Sandler.

Powell said last week that once the Fed reaches its neutral rate, it may then tighten credit even further — to a level that would restrain growth — “if that turns out to be appropriate.” Financial markets are pricing in a rate as high as 3.6% by mid2023, which would be the highest in 15 years.