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Economic Commentary

When Is a Rate Hike Not Tighter Policy?

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Now that the Fed has started to bump up the federal funds rate, the explanation often heard for it is that the Fed is “tightening” monetary policy to keep economic growth in check. But sometimes the Fed needs to move rates just to keep policy from changing.

08.01.2004EC 8/1/2004

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Altig, David. 2004. “When Is a Rate Hike Not Tighter Policy?” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 8/1/2004.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International