Federal Reserve officials are shifting their focus away from bolstering the economic recovery and toward trying to guard against out-of-control inflation, and on Wednesday they are expected to announce they are hastening plans to cut their policy help.

Policymakers are wrapping up their final gathering of 2021, and are widely expected to signal a faster end to the bond-buying campaign they have used to keep money flowing through financial markets and support the economy since the early days of the pandemic. They could also telegraph that they expect to raise rates from rock-bottom more rapidly than they projected just a few months ago.

The potential for major policy signals at the Fed’s meeting, which concludes at 2 p.m. Wednesday, will make it one of the most closely watched of the pandemic era.

Officials took their first step toward weaning the economy off the central bank’s support in November, when they said they would begin to slow a large-scale bond-buying program that had been in place since early in the pandemic to keep money flowing around markets and support the economy. In the weeks since the Fed’s last meeting, fresh data has showed that consumer prices are climbing rapidly and the unemployment rate is falling swiftly as the economy heals.

Given inflation and growth trends, Fed officials made clear ahead of their December meeting that they planned to discuss withdrawing support more quickly, and economists think officials will on Wednesday signal a plan to taper off bond purchases so that the buying will stop altogether in March.

Wall Street investors will also eagerly watch both the Fed’s quarterly economic projections and the post-meeting news conference by the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, for any hint at when and how rapidly policymakers expect to lift interest rates away from near-zero, where they have been set since March 2020.

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