RATES

摘要

Will interest rates be raised? If so, when? That's been a nagging issue on the minds of farmers and lenders for months."The question on the table is, when will the Fed raise rates?" says Esther George, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.The federal-funds rate (the interest rate at which a bank lends funds overnight to another bank) has hovered near 0% since December 2008, when the U.S. was in the grip of the financial crisis. The last time the Fed's target rate was raised was in 2006. You'd have to go back to 2008 to find interest rates above 6% (see the graph below).The Fed's three prerequisites for an increase are price stability, full employment, and financial stability. Federal Reserve Bank chair Janet Yellen has indicated that a rise would be "appropriate" by year-end.