- September 25, 2022
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Economy
Illustration: Chen Xia/Global Times
As predicted, the US Federal Reserve made another large interest rate hike on Wednesday, adding further pressure to global equities markets and sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average below 29,600 points at the end of Friday trading. If compared with the index’s all-time high of more than 36,000 points in late 2021, hundreds of billions of dollars of investors’ and pensioners’ savings have evaporated.
To make things worse, the US central bank remains stubbornly aggressive and hawkish, indicating more rate hikes are likely before the end of this year. The Fed is now raising rates at one of the fastest paces in its modern history. The 75 basis points rate hike on Wednesday – the fifth in a row – lifts the rate the Fed charges banks to borrow from near zero at the beginning of 2022 to a current minimum of 3 percent.
By 2023, the Fed could raise rates to as high as 4.5 percent, according to the US central bank’s…
