The US Federal Reserve could try to shock the banking system back to life and avert a burgeoning financial crisis by holding interest rates steady at the end of its two-day meeting on Wednesday (Mar 22).

Up till Mar 11, when the central bank’s media “blackout” ahead of this week’s meeting began, Fed chair Jerome Powell and other senior officials had repeatedly guaranteed a continuation of their inflation-fighting campaign.

But the world has changed a lot since then, in a way that brings back painful memories of the global financial crisis back in 2008.