Citing healthy momentum in the U.S. labor markets and confidence that inflation is starting to climb upward toward the Fed’s 2% target, the Fed pulled the trigger on the first rate hike in nearly a decade.
After seven years of rock-bottom interest rates held low to stanch the bleeding from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and after months of unusually public hand-wringing over the precise timing of liftoff, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved a rate hike intended to start easing U.S. monetary policy back to normal.
