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Slack.com slash DHQ. So maybe the seventh time is a charm, huh? It is Fed Day in America

gang from American public media. This is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Cai, Rizdole. It is Wednesday. Today, the 14th of December, it is always

to have you long. Everybody Fed Day indeed. And by and large, Jay Powell stuck to the script.

We think that we'll have to maintain a restrictive stance of policy for some time. Historical

experience caution strongly against prematurely loosening policy.

Powell and the rest of the Fed have been saying that for a very long time. As had come to

be widely expected and anticipated, the Federal Open Market Committee bumped its key

interest rate a half a percentage point higher today. That is the seventh straight increase

this year. The target for the Federal Funds rate now stands at a range of four and a quarter

to four and a half percent. The big news, though, of course, is that the rate hike wasn't

three quarters of a percentage point.

Having moved so quickly and having now so much restraint that's still in the pipeline,

we think that the appropriate thing to do now is to move to a slower pace. And that

will allow us to feel our way.

Macroeconomics is an exact at best, hence the central bank feeling its way, but it does

kind of lead to the obvious question.

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