President Joe Biden said Monday that he will decide by the end of the week whether he would support a federal gasoline tax holiday, possibly saving U.S. consumers as much as 18.4 cents a gallon.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that she expects the U.S. economy to slow in the months ahead, but that a recession is not inevitable.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year even though consumers and businesses kept spending at a solid pace, the government reported Thursday in a slight downgrade of its previous estimate for the January-March quarter.
The Federal Reserve is poised this week to accelerate its most drastic steps in three decades to attack inflation by making it costlier to borrow – for a car, a home, a business deal, a credit card purchase – all of which will compound Americans’ financial strains and likely weaken the economy.
The Federal Reserve must move faster than it has in the past to rein in high inflation, Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday, signaling that sharp interest rate increases are likely in the coming months, beginning at the Fed’s next policy meeting in May.
