Interest Rate | featured news

The central bank affirmed that it would keep up its existing efforts to stimulate the economy, even though it expected a return to moderate growth.

To quell the latest financial crisis, the Federal Reserve smashed interest rates to the floor by buying bonds with money it effectively prints. Since 2008 assets on the Fed’s balance sheet, including those bonds, have tripled, to $3 trillion. (Hey, people needed encouragement, and low rates are encouraging.) The mixed results: Entrepreneurs and homeowners got some relief, while savers got whacked along with the value of the U.S. dollar. Starving for yield, investors piled into stocks, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its all-time high, absent inflation.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says stock prices have gotten a boost from low interest rates caused by the Federal Reserve's stimulus efforts.

The data is likely to put pressure on the European Central Bank to cut interest rates at its next meeting.

The central bank said Wednesday that it would maintain short-term interest rates near zero, even after it stops buying bonds, for as long as the unemployment rate stayed above 6.5 percent.

The euro zone economy shows little sign of recovering before the year-end despite an easing of financial market conditions, European Central Bank Mario Draghi said on Thursday after interest rates were left at a record low.

Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a wide-ranging defense Monday of the Federal Reserve's aggressive policies to stimulate the still-weak economy. The Fed needs to drive down long-term borrowing rates because the economy isn't growing fast enough to reduce high unemployment, Bernanke said in a speech to the Economic Club of Indiana. The unemployment rate is 8.1 percent.

The average U.S. rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage touched its record low this week and the rate on 15-year mortgage hit a new record.

Record-low interest rates are out of reach for many homeowners, and a big reason is that millions are underwater. Obama and others are trying to assist them. U.S. interest rates are at rock-bottom levels, but that's not helping most Americans with mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, hoping to give another shot in the arm to the pallid recovery, announced it would launch a new round of a controversial bond-buying stimulus program. The central bank also further extended its pledge to keep short-term interest rates near zero, now through the middle of 2015.