Diverging Fortunes in U.S. and Europe Signal Widening Interest-Rate Gap

The Federal Reserve is likely to raise short-term interest rates this week while the ECB could signal it won’t start raising rates for some time

David Harrison in Washington and

Tom Fairless in Frankfurt

June 12, 2018 5:34 a.m. ET

Central banks in the U.S. and Europe are both expected to move this week to unwind stimulus policies adopted since the global financial crisis a decade ago.

But the likely steps mask a recent divergence in the fortunes of the world’s top two economic blocs, which looks set to keep the central banks on different interest-rate tracks for many months to come.

The...