Fed Entering Brave New Policy World as Rates Near Normal Levels
- Central bank seen raising rates this week, slowing in 2019
- Trump attacks complicate Fed efforts to chart new rate path
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As the Federal Reserve approaches the final stages of monetary policy normalization 10 years after it cut interest rates to zero, it faces the tough task of charting a less certain path while taking incoming fire from President Donald Trump.
Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues are expected to ignore Trump’s criticisms and raise interest rates this week for the fourth time in 2018, to a setting of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent. That will nudge rates to the bottom of what Powell has called the “broad range’’ of what’s neutral or normal for the economy -- neither restricting nor spurring growth.