European Central Bank hikes interest rates to combat inflation and leaves door open to more

By DAVID McHUGH
AP Business Writer

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank has raised interest rates for the ninth straight time in its yearlong campaign to stamp out painfully high inflation. ECB President Christine Lagarde had all but promised the quarter-percentage point increase and then kept the door open to further hikes despite increasing fears of recession. She said Thursday that “we might hike or we might hold” at the bank’s next meeting in September. But she insisted that the ECB is “very strongly rooted in our determination to break the back of inflation.” U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday was similarly noncommittal about whether more rate increases might be coming.