Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December policy meeting underpin officials’ hawkish pivot and suggest earlier and faster rate increases in addition to a quicker start to normalizing the central bank’s massive balance sheet—itself a form of policy tightening.
The meeting minutes, released Wednesday afternoon, follow the Dec. 15 meeting where policy makers signaled three rate increases this year and three the following year as inflation concerns deepened. After months of describing pricing pressures as “transitory,” the…