1. Our high and rising house prices rest perilously on short-term interest rates.

2. Earlier, the Federal Reserve said that higher short-term interest rates, currently 3%, should not be ruled out.

3. Open market operations are one tool within monetary policy implemented by the Federal Reserve to steer short-term interest rates.

4. Fed policy makers conclude a two-day meeting Wednesday at which most economists expect them to lower the short-term interest rates they control.

5. Contractionary policy is a type of monetary measure which maintains higher than usual short-term interest rates, or which reduces or even shrink the rate of growth in the money supply

6. Following the abrupt rise in inflation and its persistence in most countries in the 1970s, central banks shifted their focus from operational targets for short-term interest rates to intermediate targets for quantitative variables expressed in nominal terms.