Countdown quickens to US rate hike

Several of the world’s top central banks will meet in the coming week, but only one, the US Federal Reserve, is set to start a final countdown on the second most anticipated event of the year after the presidential election.

Fed chair Janet Yellen and the rest of the Fed’s policy-setters appear to have left themselves the December meeting to deliver a rate rise in 2016, with hardly anyone expecting a move this Wednesday only days before the November 8 election.

If the Fed does go ahead the following month, as most in financial markets and analysts expect, it will have been a full year since the last increase and three short of the number of moves the Fed had anticipated back then.