The Federal Reserve Board of the United States ended its two-day monetary policy meeting on the 14th and announced that it would raise the target range of the federal funds interest rate by 50 basis points to between 4.25% and 4.50%. Since this year, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by 425 basis points. The Federal Reserve said in a statement released after the meeting that in recent months, the employment growth in the United States has been strong, the unemployment rate has remained low, but the inflation rate remains high. The Federal Reserve expects that, in order to support employment maximization and the long-term inflation target of 2%, it will be appropriate to continuously increase the target range of the federal funds interest rate, so as to make the monetary policy stance sufficiently restrictive and restore the inflation rate to 2% over time. The Federal Reserve reiterated that when determining the pace of future interest rate increases, it will take into account the cumulative tightening effect of monetary policy, the lag of the impact of monetary policy on economic activities and inflation, and the development of the economy and financial markets. At the same time, the Federal Reserve will continue to reduce its holdings of government bonds, institutional debt and institutional mortgage-backed securities, and is firmly committed to the long-term goal of reducing the inflation rate to 2%. This is the seventh consecutive interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve this year. Previously, the Federal Reserve had raised interest rates by 75 basis points for four consecutive times. On the same day, the Federal Reserve also released the latest economic outlook forecast. It is expected that the U.S. economy will grow by 0.5% in 2022, 0.3 percentage points higher than the forecast in September this year, but it significantly lowered the economic growth forecast for 2023 by 0.7 percentage points to 0.5%. At the same time, the Federal Reserve predicts that the U.S. unemployment rate will rise to 3.7% this year, 0.1 percentage points lower than the previous forecast, but the unemployment rate may rise to 4.6% in 2023, 0.2 percentage points higher than the previous forecast. In terms of prices, the Federal Reserve expects the inflation rate to rise to 5.6% this year, and the core inflation rate excluding food and energy prices will be 4.8%, up 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points respectively. The US core inflation rate is expected to fall to 3.5% next year, which is still far above the 2% inflation target. According to the economic outlook, all members of the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve expect the federal funds interest rate to rise to more than 4.75% next year, of which 10 members expect the interest rate to rise to between 5% and 5.25%, and 5 members expect it to rise to between 5.25% and 5.50%. At the press conference held after the meeting, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said that since this year, the Federal Reserve has taken strong measures to tighten monetary policy, but so far, the full effect of rapid tightening has "not yet appeared", and the Federal Reserve still "has a lot of work to do". Fed officials continue to believe that inflation risks are biased upwards, and it is expected that it will be appropriate to continue to raise interest rates. (Liu Xinshe)