At any given time, there are countless different interest rates for countless different transactions at countless different institutions. The government doesn’t control all of them – how could it? But then how can you say the Fed has raised or lowered interest rates?

The Fed, or the Federal Reserve, is the whole country’s bank. It operates out of 12 different locations and it lands money to commercial banks, which in turn land money to us. The Federal Reserve Board is the agency that controls this bank and its job is to maintain a secure financial system throughout the country. The Fed’s primary concern is to regulate our economy’s rate of growth – if the economy grows too quickly, we get swamped by inflation, and if it grows too slowly, we could enter a recession.

Because the Fed lands money to all other banks, its interest rate affects all other interest rates, which adjust to accommodate the Fed’s behavior. So when the Fed decides the economy is growing too fast, it raises its own interest rate – raising all other interest rates in a kind of domino effect – and slows down spending that way. If the Fed wants to try to increase economic growth, it lowers its interest rate, which usually increases spending. While interest rates can vary from institution to institution, they’re all proportional to the country’s most important interest rate: the Federal Reserve’s.