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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. central bank policy-makers were set to pull the plug on Wednesday on the cheapest credit in decades by raising official interest rates for the first time in four years.
Analysts universally expect the Federal Reserve's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee to move the federal funds rate a quarter percentage point upward from its current 1 percent, which is its lowest level since 1958.
The FOMC began a two-day meeting on Tuesday afternoon and is to issue an announcement containing its decision on rates at about 2:15 p.m. EDT.
If there is scant suspense about the rate move, interest in the Fed's post-meeting statement is running high.
Wall Street players will comb through the statement, examining each carefully chosen word for any change to the Fed's intention to keep further rate rises gradual, or "measured" -- language taken to mean a series of quarter-percentage point increases rather than those half a percentage point or larger.
"I think they're going to try to get some flexibility so that if inflation increases or the economy accelerates beyond what the Federal Reserve is expecting, they'll be able to move a little bit more aggressively," said economist Anthony Chan of Banc One in Columbus, Ohio.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said in London at the beginning of the month that the central bank was ready to "do what is required" to stem any upsurge in price pressures.