The Federal Reserve won’t need to pick up the pace of its planned interest-rate increases in response to the recently-passed tax overhaul package, White House chief economist Kevin Hassett said. The administration’s computer modeling of the economic effects of the tax plan result in interest rates that “aren’t inconsistent with the Fed’s current guidance,’’ he said during a Jan. 6 session at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia. U.S. central bankers in December penciled in three interest-rate increases for this year, the same pace they foresaw in September, even as they raised their ... (full story)