“The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday at its first meeting of the year, its eighth straight rate hike since it began a program of tightening borrowing costs last year in an effort to bring down inflation.
It’s the smallest rate hike since last March, coming off a 50 basis point hike in December that followed four 75 basis point hikes starting last June. It will lift the federal funds rate to a range of 4.5 to 4.75 percent as the Fed pushes toward a projected target rate of 5.1 percent, which was last updated in December.”