The daily business briefing: February 22, 2018

Fed minutes pointing to more rate hikes weigh down stocks, Twitter cracks down on bots, and more

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1. Fed minutes point to more interest rate hikes, pressuring stocks

Federal Reserve minutes released on Wednesday showed that central bank policy makers expressed confidence in the economy at their January meeting. Fed leaders cited "substantial underlying economic momentum" and said they were increasingly confident about reaching their target inflation rate of 2 percent, despite a recent uptick in price increases. The minutes nudged up expectations that the Fed will make the next in a series of gradual interest rate hikes at its March meeting. U.S. stocks rose after the data came out, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average reversed course and closed down by 0.7 percent. Dow futures slid further early Thursday, as did global stocks, on concerns about rising interest rates.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.