Wells Fargo has suspended two senior employees in its community lending and investment unit amid a US inquiry into the bank's purchase of low-income housing tax credits, Bloomberg reports, citing "people familiar with the matter". The Department of Justice is looking into whether Wells Fargo and other banks colluded with developers to lower bids for the tax credits, part of a program created in 1986 that encourages affordable housing developments. The greater the spread between the price of the housing tax credit and its face value, the higher the return to the investor - in this case, the banks. As widely anticipated, the Federal Open Market Committee increased the fed funds rate 25 basis points, CNBC reports. That now takes the rate to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent, where it last was in April 2008. This is the eighth increase since the Fed began normalising policy in December 2015. Along with the rate increase, the FOMC continued to project one more rate rise before the end of the year and three in 2019.