Hello and welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The phone number 877-97-973-7-4-25 nationwide. Now, you can always go to

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There is some breaking news. We need to get to this breaking news.

The Federal Reserve has now raised interest rates as expected, a quarter of a percentage point.

This is from the New York Times. The Fed has kept rates near zero since March 2020,

and the decision marked the first increase since 2018.

Policymakers are projecting six more interest rate increases over the course of 2022

as inflation comes in at a 40-year high.

With appropriate firming in the stance of monetary policy,

the committee expects inflation to return to its 2% objective and the labor market to remain strong, the Fed said in its statement, noting

that the committee anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate.

The Fed is at an inflection point after two years of trying to help the economy recover from the damage inflicted by the global pandemic.

While the coronavirus continues to disrupt commerce around the world, the United States economy has staged a swift recovery.

American jobs market have rebounded rapidly from steep pandemic job losses that had pushed unemployment to 14.7%

and businesses are now struggling to find workers. A surge in consumer spending has helped

to push the rate of inflation to levels not seen since the 1980s. Instead of echoing the

anemic slog back from the 2007-9 recession, one that kept millions of applicants out of work

and left inflation tepid despite years of rock-bottom rates. The pandemic bounce back has been vigorous.

Prices for groceries, couches, and rent have all climbed rapidly, and the Federal Reserve

officials have been warily eyeing that trend on Wednesday.

They took their biggest step yet toward counteracting it, raising the policy interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point.

That small change will carry with it a major signal.

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