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[ad_1] Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies during the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing titled The Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress, in Hart Building on Tuesday, March 7, 2023. Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images When the Federal Reserve starts to raise interest rates, it generally keeps doing so until something breaks, or so goes the collective Wall Street wisdom. So with the second- and third-largest bank failures ever in the books happening just over the past few days, and worries of more to come, that would seem to qualify as significant breakage and reason for the central bank to back off. related investing news Not so fast. Even with the failure over the past several days of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that forced regulators to spring into action , markets still expect the Fed to keep up its inflation-fighting efforts. Suring bond yields played into the demise in particular of SVB as the bank fa

[ad_1] Almost all Federal Reserve officials at their June meeting indicated further policy tightening is likely, if at a slower pace than the rapid-fire rate increases that had characterized monetary policy since early 2022, according to minutes released Wednesday. Policymakers decided against a rate increase amid concerns over economic growth, even though most members think further hikes are on the way. Citing the lagged impact of policy and other concerns, they saw room to skip the June meeting after enacting 10 straight rate increases. Officials felt that "leaving the target range unchanged at this meeting would allow them more time to assess the economy's progress toward the Committee's goals of maximum employment and price stability." Federal Open Market Committee members voiced hesitance over a multitude of factors. They said that a brief pause would give the committee time to assess the impacts of the hikes, which have totaled 5 percentage points, the mos