NEW YORK (AP) — Interest rates are charging higher, and that can be a good or bad thing depending on whether you're saving or borrowing.
For savers, it's a long-awaited win. After years of making virtually nothing on their money market accounts and certificates of deposit, savers are finally getting closer to keeping up with inflation. Investors are also getting rewarded with higher interest payments for buying newly issued bonds.
WASHINGTON (AP) — By just about everyone's estimation, the Federal Reserve will have an announcement to make Wednesday afternoon: It's raising interest rates.
The expected hike, the Fed's first since last December, will signal its view that the U.S. job market and economy are nearing full health, with the unemployment rate at an unusually low 4.6 percent. It would also mean that rates on some consumer and business loans will likely increase modestly.
Yellen: Rate Hike Likely Appropriate this Year
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who has been in the hot seat over the central bank's interest-rate policy, now has another headache: Wells Fargo.
Yellen is likely to face sharp questions from a House committee Wednesday over whether federal banking regulators fell down on the job by not detecting practices at Wells Fargo that allegedly had the nation's second largest bank opening millions of accounts without customers' permission.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve has demonstrated one of the core tenets of central banking: On the Fed panel that sets interest rates, some votes are more equal than others.
The panel — the Federal Open Market Committee — voted Wednesday to keep rates unchanged, something it's done for six straight meetings. What was unusual this time was that the result drew dissenting votes from three members — the most dissents in nearly two years.
Fed Keeps Key Rate Unchanged But Hints of Hike
NEW YORK (AP) — Asian stocks rose Thursday after the U.S. and Japanese central banks left interest rates unchanged.
KEEPING SCORE: Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 1.4 percent to 24,007.40 points and the Shanghai Composite Index advanced 0.7 percent to 3,046.49. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. Seoul's Kospi added 0.9 percent to 2,017.94 and Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 gained 0.4 percent to 5,497.40. Benchmarks in New Zealand, Taiwan and Indonesia also rose while Taiwan declined.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is keeping its key interest rate unchanged but signaling that it will likely raise rates before year's end.
The Fed said in a statement ending its latest policy meeting Wednesday that the U.S. job market has continued to strengthen and economic activity has picked up. But it noted that business investment remains soft and inflation too low and that it wants to see further improvement in the job market.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest on the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting, which ended at 2 p.m. with the release of a policy statement, followed by a news conference by Chair Janet Yellen (all times are Eastern):
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3:15 p.m.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen says Fed officials have been "distressed" to see banks only addressing problems of employee misconduct after they crop up, rather than having solid procedures in place to ensure that employees act "in an ethical and appropriate manner."
WASHINGTON (AP) — Not quite yet.
That's the decision the Federal Reserve is expected to deliver Wednesday when it announces to the financial world whether it will resume raising interest rates now — or wait until later, perhaps sometime soon.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Again and again in recent months, the Federal Reserve has signaled that it's edging closer to resuming the interest-rate hikes it began in December.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. factory output fell, consumers cut back at retailers and wholesale prices went nowhere in August, the latest evidence of a less-than-robust economy. The weak numbers could give the Federal Reserve further reason to hold off on raising interest rates when it meets next week.