Inflation and announcements on the rise in key rates on the menu: the monetary committee of the American central bank (Fed) began its meeting on Tuesday morning, which will end on Wednesday noon.
The meeting of the monetary policy committee (FOMC) began at 0900 (1400 GMT) as scheduled, said a spokesman for the Fed.
Those talks will wrap up at noon on Wednesday, after which a press release will be issued at 2:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. GMT) and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m. GMT).
The powerful Federal Reserve will specify the pace at which it will raise its key rates in the face of stronger and more persistent inflation than expected.
It could thus announce that it would make a first increase in March, at the next following meeting. Some analysts even think that it will start raising rates without delay from this meeting.
Raising day-to-day interest rates should slow down demand by making credit more expensive for households and businesses, in order to cope with inflation that is much stronger and more persistent than expected. These federal funds rates determine the cost of money that the banks lend to each other.
The officials of the monetary institution will also say if they choose to raise them by 25 or 50 basis points, that is to say, move them into a range of 0.25 0.50%, or directly into a range from 0.50 to 0.75%.
Markets are also anxiously awaiting how many hikes are planned for the coming months and how far the monetary committee plans to push rates higher.
The key rates were lowered in March 2020 to a range of 0 to 0.25%, when the Covid-19 pandemic spread in the United States, to stimulate consumption, the engine of American economic growth.
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The Fed had paved the way for this rate hike at its previous meeting in mid-December, announcing that it would end its asset purchases sooner than expected, starting in March instead of June.
It had also, for the first time, ceased to qualify as temporary this inflation which has for months been well above its long-term objective of 2%.
Prices have indeed climbed 7% in 2021, their fastest pace since 1982, according to the CPI index. The Fed favors another indicator of inflation, the PCE index, whose data for 2021 will be published on Friday.